If news media companies had lots of spare cash lying around, they couldn't do much better with it than try to extract and clone whatever genetic quirk it is that gives my colleague Mackenzie Carpenter her unsurpassed trend-sniffing nose for news.

An article she wrote three weeks ago on the downward trend in gardening industry sales must have hit some collective sore spot -- ooh, ouch, right there -- because weed-weary readers e-mailed it and e-mailed it, and then e-mailed it some more.

Frankly, I'm surprised that by the Tuesday her article appeared, so many of us were even able to sit upright at a computer, much less uncurl our arthritic fingers from the trowels and bypass pruners we'd been wielding all through the weekend.

Are aging baby-boomers scaling back their gardens? Nursery owners and gardening experts fear this is the case -- that a 15 percent decline in sales over five years means "the bloom is off the rose of what had been a growth industry."

But this aching gardener would like to suggest that nursery sales are down precisely because the bloom is on the rose . What had been a growth industry isn't growing right now because what they sold me five years ago is still growing gangbusters in my back yard.

To put it bluntly, I'm not buying as much because I'm not killing as much.

Even my single rose -- it's a mostly shady garden -- is doing well despite a traumatic relocation last month.

And the great thing about perennials is, well, they grow back each year. They can also be divided (and therefore multiplied), which is a lot easier than cloning good journalists and a lot cheaper than buying new plants.

Although part of my reaction to the diminished-gardening story, like other people's, was relief ("Whew! I'm glad I'm not the only one whose joints are not up to this anymore."), part of my reaction was protest.

When you think about it -- preferably over a chilled, post-gardening drink -- the baby boom encompasses an unwieldy range of life stages. Born in 1962, I'm at the tail end of the boom. I don't necessarily have much in common with someone born in '46 who has finished raising her kids, is contemplating retirement and is ready to downsize her house and garden.

That's my theory, anyway. And the fact is, I didn't downsize my garden this year. I doubled it.

My back yard used to be the parking lot of a mechanic's garage. It's a double lot, about 40 feet wide. I acquired the empty lot next door from the city a few years ago, bought the one next to it last year and began regrading and planting this spring.

The bad news for the gardening industry is that in doubling my garden, I bought almost nothing. Instead, I divided enormous hosta and rampant coral bells into many new, and still generous-sized, plants. I relocated the bigger shrubs and even some small trees to enlarge the garden's structure and make room for all the "new" perennials.

Flats of annuals? No thanks. I've never liked the shade-loving annuals' garish colors. But with the garden's mature plants in place, I now have time to grow more fun stuff from seed -- a dramatically cheaper method.

In short, my gardening isn't decreasing, but my expenses are. Could others be doing the same? A National Gardening Association report found that 91 million American households participated in lawn and garden activities in 2005, an 11 percent increase from 2004 and a new national record.

Despite this increase, the bad news for retailers is, as reported three weeks ago, that we're spending less per household, "resulting in a small decline in total lawn and garden sales in 2005," the report summarized.

But since my purpose is to encourage aging gardeners and the businesses we still depend on, I offer you...

Toby.

Teaching my beagle to do his business outside rather than inside was as specific as his training ever got.

A considerable amount of the money I've spent at nurseries over the past seven years has been to replace plants to which Toby had, um, fertilized.

Last summer, for instance, he burned out a $36 fothergilla. Don't even get me started on the dead tiarellas and forever-stunted azaleas. With the back yard overhaul, there are many new places and plants that Toby the Wonder Beagle needs to mark as his own.

I could still add a dog run to my garden's redesign, or I could let Toby continue to provide me with an excuse for the occasional nursery purchase. That's the least I could do for the nurseries I love. Actually, as my aching joints will testify, that's just about the most I can do.