Engaging Agricultural Tourism Through Gardening Experience

Discover how gardening experience(s) can reconnect people with agriculture through farm visits. This innovative approach combines education, recreation, and gastronomy, offering meaningful connections between urban residents and rural landscapes while supporting farmers and preserving farmland.

RURAL COMMUNITY

Mithat Direk

9/18/2026

Vibrant spring garden with colorful tulips, trees, and a stream

There is something deeply human about watching a seed become a plant. For much of history, this connection with soil, seasons, and food production was part of everyday life. Today, however, millions of people live in cities where vegetables often appear on supermarket shelves with little visible connection to the soil, water, farmers, and patient labor behind them. This growing distance from agriculture has created a desire among many urban residents to reconnect with nature and experience food production firsthand.

Across Türkiye, this desire is contributing to the growing popularity of “hobby gardens”, small plots, often located around cities, where residents can grow vegetables for personal enjoyment. These gardens can provide relaxation, recreation, fresh produce, and a valuable opportunity to rediscover the satisfaction of working with soil. Yet their expansion can also create unintended pressures. Agricultural land may be divided into increasingly smaller parcels, farming areas can become fragmented, unauthorized structures may appear, and roads, water supplies, waste management, and other infrastructure can face additional pressure. In some locations, land intended for agricultural production may gradually shift toward recreational uses, reducing its productive potential.

The challenge, therefore, is not to discourage people from reconnecting with agriculture. Instead, the question is how this growing interest can be accommodated without unnecessarily consuming or fragmenting valuable farmland.

One promising answer may come from tourism. Rather than providing every visitor with a separate plot, existing farms could offer structured opportunities for visitors to participate in vegetable production. Visitors could plant seeds, prepare beds, care for crops, harvest vegetables, and learn directly from farmers, while the land remains intact and productive. The farmer retains ownership and agricultural control, while visitors gain the satisfaction and knowledge of growing food.

This concept can be described as “amateur vegetable tourism” or “experience gardening.” It brings together ideas from horti-tourism, agritourism, rural tourism, experiential tourism, gastronomy tourism, and nature-based tourism. More importantly, it changes visitors from passive spectators into active participants in agriculture, creating a practical bridge between increasingly urban lives and the farms that feed them.

Experience Is the Product

Horti-tourism is an emerging form of tourism that brings gardening, plant cultivation, and interaction with nature into the visitor’s experience. Recent research identifies three broad dimensions of horti-tourism: educational, therapeutic, and recreational. These dimensions fit particularly well with the idea of amateur vegetable tourism, where visitors do not simply walk through a garden or observe farmers working. Instead, they participate directly by preparing soil, planting seedlings, watering crops, controlling weeds, caring for plants, and eventually harvesting what they have helped grow. The experience therefore shifts tourism from passive observation to active participation, from watching to doing.

This reflects a broader change in tourism preferences. Increasingly, visitors want more than photographs and sightseeing; they seek meaningful experiences that allow them to understand local environments, cultures, and everyday activities. Amateur vegetable gardening can provide exactly this type of authentic encounter. Planting a tomato, harvesting a pepper, or picking fresh herbs may seem like ordinary agricultural tasks, but within a tourism setting they become memorable activities that connect visitors directly with the food-production process.

The economics of this experience are particularly interesting. A visitor might travel several kilometers to a farm to grow or harvest vegetables that could be purchased much more cheaply from a nearby shop. If the objective were simply to obtain vegetables, the journey would make little economic sense. But the visitor is not buying parsley, tomatoes, or peppers alone. They are paying for time outdoors, participation, learning, relaxation, and the satisfaction of producing something with their own hands. The economic value therefore comes primarily from the experience rather than the physical product. In this model, the vegetable becomes part of the story, while the experience of growing it becomes the tourism product.

The educational value is considerable. Visitors can learn about seeds, soil preparation, planting, irrigation, nutrition, pest management, harvesting, and seasonal production. For children and young people especially, such activities can strengthen food literacy and help them understand where food comes from and why agriculture matters. Gardening also provides recreation by bringing people into natural environments and encouraging physical activity and social interaction. Research on community gardens has linked gardening participation with greater contact with nature, social relationships, and aspects of well-being (Liu et al., 2025). This should not be presented as medical treatment, but rather as a nature-based leisure experience that can support relaxation and connection.

Finally, amateur vegetable tourism has a natural connection with gastronomy. Freshly harvested tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, and leafy vegetables can become ingredients in traditional local dishes. Visitors could participate in both cultivation and preparation, creating a complete journey from field to kitchen. In this way, experience gardening can connect agriculture, tourism, food culture, and rural economies while offering visitors something increasingly valuable: the opportunity to experience how food is actually grown.

From Hobby Gardens to Experience Gardens in Türkiye

The proposed model for Türkiye does not require agricultural land to be divided into individual plots for visitors. Instead, existing farms and agricultural enterprises can open their fields to carefully managed tourism activities. The visitor journey could begin with an introduction to the farm and basic agricultural education, followed by hands-on vegetable growing, crop maintenance, harvesting, and finally a gastronomy experience. Visitors could also purchase farm products or locally produced foods before returning home. At every stage, the farmer retains ownership and control of the land, while agricultural production continues without unnecessary fragmentation. In simple terms, visitors do not acquire a piece of farmland; they acquire an experience.

An important advantage of this approach is its potential to operate throughout the year. Agriculture is a continuous process, and different seasons naturally provide different tourism activities. Spring can focus on soil preparation and planting; spring and summer can offer irrigation, crop care, and field activities; summer can bring harvesting experiences; and summer and autumn can include cooking, tasting, and farm-to-table events. Autumn can introduce visitors to seed collection and storage, while winter can provide workshops on local varieties, traditional farming practices, seeds, and agricultural heritage. This seasonal structure can turn a single visit into a continuing relationship between visitors and farms.

The concept also invites Türkiye to rethink the conventional “hobby garden.” Traditional hobby gardens often depend on individual plots, private use, and personal production, which can gradually fragment agricultural land and encourage non-agricultural development. An “experience garden,” by contrast, keeps farmland intact while allowing people to participate in cultivation without claiming ownership or exclusive use of a parcel.

This model combines several benefits: agricultural education, recreation, nature contact, gastronomy, farm-based tourism, and additional income opportunities for farmers. It can also strengthen consumers’ understanding of food production and local agricultural traditions. Most importantly, it addresses the underlying desire behind hobby gardening, the human wish to work with soil and nature, without requiring valuable agricultural land to be divided into ever-smaller pieces. For Türkiye, experience gardening could therefore provide a practical bridge between urban lifestyles, tourism, and productive agriculture.

Designing Experiences That Benefit Visitors and Farmers

Amateur vegetable gardening can be developed into a diverse portfolio of tourism experiences rather than a single farm activity. A one-day vegetable experience, for example, could take visitors through the farm, introduce them to basic cultivation practices, allow them to plant seedlings and harvest vegetables, and conclude with a local culinary experience. Family and children’s programs could provide hands-on lessons about seeds, soil, plant growth, insects, irrigation, and harvesting, turning agriculture into an enjoyable outdoor classroom. Seasonal programs could encourage visitors to return at different times of the year and participate in planting, crop care, harvesting, and seed collection. Local seed and biodiversity experiences could introduce visitors to traditional vegetable varieties, seed preservation, and the importance of agricultural diversity. A field-to-kitchen package could complete the journey by allowing visitors to prepare local dishes using vegetables they have personally harvested. These experiences can be combined with rural, educational, nature, and gastronomy tourism to create a flexible tourism portfolio.

However, successful experience gardening must remain environmentally responsible. Visitor numbers should match the capacity of the farm, while clear rules should address water use, waste, transportation, soil compaction, crop damage, noise, and the protection of surrounding habitats. Visitors should understand that entering a working farm carry responsibilities. The idea of the “responsible visitor” is therefore central: people can enjoy agricultural landscapes only if they help protect the resources that make those experiences possible.

For farmers, the model offers an opportunity to diversify income beyond the sale of crops. A participating farm could generate revenue through guided activities, agricultural education, harvesting experiences, local foods, cooking events, farm products, and potentially accommodation or seasonal festivals. Such diversification may be particularly valuable for small and medium-sized family farms because tourism income can complement agricultural earnings and provide an additional buffer against market and climate-related uncertainties.

The broader significance of amateur vegetable tourism lies in creating a new space between agriculture and tourism. A conventional farm visit often places the visitor in the role of observer, whereas experience gardening makes the visitor an active participant in selected stages of production. The distinction is important: the visitor does not need to own land to experience agriculture. Instead, the farm remains a productive agricultural enterprise while becoming a place for learning, recreation, food culture, and meaningful participation. In this way, experience gardening offers a tourism model built around participation rather than ownership, agricultural production rather than land subdivision, and shared experiences rather than private plots.

Conclusion

Experience gardening offers a practical way to reconnect people with agriculture without turning productive farmland into fragmented recreational plots. By allowing visitors to participate in planting, crop care, harvesting, and food preparation on existing farms, the model transforms agricultural production into an engaging tourism experience while preserving land ownership and farming activity. Its educational, recreational, cultural, and gastronomic dimensions can attract families, children, and urban residents while creating additional income opportunities for farmers. Seasonal activities can further transform a single farm visit into a year-round tourism relationship. However, responsible visitor management, environmental safeguards, and appropriate visitor capacity will be essential for long-term success. For Türkiye, the concept provides an opportunity to rethink the conventional hobby garden and develop a stronger connection between cities and rural areas. Ultimately, the value lies not in giving visitors a piece of land, but in giving them something more meaningful: the opportunity to experience how food is grown and appreciate the people and landscapes behind it.

Please note that the views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of any organization.

The writer is affiliated with the Department of Agricultural Economics, Selcuk University, Konya-Türkiye and can be reached at mdirek@selcuk.edu.tr

Engaging Agricultural Tourism Through Gardening Experience

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