Call me old-fashioned, but I like to keep gardens and guns separate. I thought everyone did. So it came as quite a surprise when I was sent a copy of Garden & Gun magazine, an elegantly designed bimonthly, which began publishing over a year ago.
For those of us snarky Northerners who are likely to make sarcastic comments about the South and the title of the magazine, Garden & Gun is for real. It is a “glossy look at ’21st Century Southern America’ with an emphasis on Southern traditions, heritage and lifestyle, particularly outdoors,” wrote The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette back in 2007. Articles on bird hunting, gardening, sailing, horses, and fishing, among other lifestyle themes, abound. And in case you’re still skeptical, Garden & Gun, headquartered in Charleston, SC, is headed by publisher Rebecca Darwin, former publisher of The New Yorker and Mirabella.
What does this tell us about magazines today? Well, dual-themed magazines may be the next big thing: How about Health & Wealth, for the aging, upper-middle-class baby boomer; or, for the twenty-something gourmet, Food & Dude; or, for the frequent DWI offender, Car & Bar.
Commenters, what would your dual-themed magazine be called? And if you’ve read Garden & Gun, what do you think?