Editor-in-chief | Stephen Orr |
---|---|
Categories | home economics, interior design |
Frequency | 12 issues/year |
Publisher | Dotdash Meredith (US) Pacific Magazines (Australia) |
Total circulation (2015) | 7,624,910 [1] |
Founded | 1922 |
Country | USA |
Based in | Des Moines, Iowa |
Language | English |
Website | bhg.com (US) bhg.com.au (Australia) |
ISSN | 0006-0151 |
Better Homes and Gardens is the fourth most widely circulated magazine in the United States. The editor in chief is Stephen Orr. Better Homes and Gardens focuses on interests regarding homes, cooking, gardening, crafts, healthy living, decorating, and entertaining. The magazine is published 12 times per year by Dotdash Meredith (formerly Meredith Corporation).
Better Homes and Garden was founded in 1922 [2] by Edwin Meredith, who had served as the United States Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson and had previously founded the magazine Successful Farming. [3] The original title was Fruit, Garden and Home. The name was changed to Better Homes and Gardens beginning with the August 1924 issue. [3]
The first editor for the magazine was Chesla C. Sherlock. [4] One of Sherlock's contributions was an article series on "Homes of Famous Americans", which was also published as a series of books. [5]
Better Homes and Gardens is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.
The Meredith Corporation publishes a number of books on home economics and gardening under the BH&G brand, the best known of which is the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, colloquially known as the "Red Plaid" book. Now in its 15th edition (published in August 2010), the Red Plaid was originally published in 1930. Meredith also publishes the New Junior Cookbook for children learning to cook.
The magazine's title was used by Meredith's real estate arm, which was sold and then called GMAC Real Estate. In October 2007, Meredith entered a 50-year licensing agreement with Realogy Corporation to license the Better Homes and Gardens name to Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. The company is based in Parsippany, New Jersey, and has offices across the country.
Meredith's broadcasting division began producing the television program Better in the fall of 2007, which is a lifestyle show which has a mix of content from Meredith's various magazine titles (included BH&G), consumer advice and celebrity interviews. The program would air on stations owned by Meredith, Scripps, Fisher and LIN TV groups. [6] Some Meredith-owned stations produce their own local edition of Better. The show was canceled in May 2015.
The brand offered a line of home decor products through a partnership with Home Interiors and Gifts, a company based on direct selling.
The Australian edition of the magazine is published by Are Media, the successor to the former Bauer Media Australia which acquired Pacific Magazines in 2020. [7]
Mad Magazine published a satire in March 1958 (issue #38) titled "Bitter Homes and Gardens," including articles titled "They Built Their House on a Lot 22 Inches Wide" (A house built between two office buildings), a "How-The..." department which suggests putting a lawn on rollers so one can drag it "to a nearby spot where it's raining", and an article on how to convert a second bathroom into a basement (with a photo of the author's wife, who has just stepped out of the shower and covers herself with a towel). The magazine was also spoofed in the 1970s as "Bitter Homes and Garbage", in a set of "Crazy Magazine Covers" produced by Fleer.
In an episode of I Love Lucy , Lucy jokes about the magazine as, "Better Homes and Garbage" when she and Ethel redecorate Lucy's apartment.
An episode of The Simpsons The Springfield Files showed a brief shot of a magazine entitled Better Homes Than Yours.
Better Homes and Gardens is mentioned in the song "I Save Cigarette Butts" by Daniel Johnston.
In Little Shop of Horrors Audrey sings in "Somewhere That's Green" about how her dream house is a "picture out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine."
In country recording artist Miranda Lambert's 2010 hit single titled "The House That Built Me", there is a verse that says, "Mama cut out pictures of houses for years from Better Homes and Gardens magazine".
Brandon Flowers mentions the magazine in the song "The Clock Was Tickin" from his 2010 album Flamingo .
The Shel Silverstein song "One's on the Way" (made popular by Loretta Lynn) has the line "'Better Homes and Gardens' shows a modern way to live."
Seventeen is an American bimonthly teen magazine headquartered in New York City. The publication targets a demographic of 13-to-19-year-old females and is owned by Hearst Magazines. Established in 1944, the magazine originally aimed to inspire teen girls to become model workers and citizens. However, it soon shifted its focus to a more fashion- and romance-oriented approach while still emphasizing the importance of self-confidence in young women. Alongside its primary themes, Seventeen also reports the latest news about celebrities.
People is an American weekly magazine that specializes in celebrity news and human-interest stories. It is published by Dotdash Meredith, a subsidiary of IAC. With a readership of 46.6 million adults in 2009, People had the largest audience of any American magazine, but it fell to second place in 2018 after its readership significantly declined to 35.9 million. People had $997 million in advertising revenue in 2011, the highest advertising revenue of any American magazine. In 2006, it had a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion. It was named "Magazine of the Year" by Advertising Age in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation, and advertising. People ranked number 6 on Advertising Age's annual "A-list" and number 3 on Adweek's "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.
William Robinson: was an Irish practical gardener and journalist whose ideas about wild gardening spurred the movement that led to the popularising of the English cottage garden, a parallel to the search for honest simplicity and vernacular style of the British Arts and Crafts movement, and were important in promoting the woodland garden. Robinson is credited as an early practitioner of the mixed herbaceous border of hardy perennial plants, a champion too of the "wild garden", who vanquished the high Victorian pattern garden of planted-out bedding schemes. Robinson's new approach to gardening gained popularity through his magazines and several books—particularly The Wild Garden, illustrated by Alfred Parsons, and The English Flower Garden.
"The Five Orange Pips", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the fifth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Martha Stewart Living was a magazine and television program featuring entertaining and lifestyle expert Martha Stewart. Both the magazine and the television program focused on lifestyle content and the domestic arts.
Mother Earth News is a bi-monthly American magazine that has a circulation of 500,520 as of 2011. It is published in Topeka, Kansas.
Meredith Corporation was an American media conglomerate based in Des Moines, Iowa, that owned newspapers, magazines, television stations, and websites. Its publications had a readership of more than 120 million and paid circulation of more than 40 million, and its websites had nearly 135 million monthly unique visitors. Its broadcast television stations reached 11% of U.S. households.
Amateur Gardening is a British fornightly magazine dedicated to gardening. It included news, advice, feature articles, and celebrity columns and interviews.
Better Homes and Gardens is an Australian television program which is broadcast on the Seven Network, which is based on the magazine of the same name domestically published by Are Media. The programs covers a wide variety of lifestyle related topics. These include, gardening, landscaping, architecture, cooking, DIY, pet care, and home improvement, as well as featuring celebrity guests. The show is hosted by former Commonwealth Games swimmer-turned-television presenter Johanna Griggs, who has hosted the program since 2005.
Sunset is a lifestyle magazine in the United States. Sunset focuses on homes, cooking, gardening, and travel, with a focus almost exclusively on the Western United States. The magazine is published six times per year by the Sunset Publishing Corporation which was sold by Time Inc. in November 2017 to Regent, a private equity firm led by investor Michael Reinstein. Regent formed the publisher Archetype in 2019 for its media holdings.
Pacific Magazines was a magazine publisher operating in Australia owned by Seven West Media. In March 2020, it was acquired by Bauer Media Australia in April 2020. In June 2020, Mercury Capital acquired Pacific Magazines as part of its purchase of Bauer's former Australian and New Zealand assets.
GMAC Real Estate was a real estate franchised broker. It had 13,000 agents. In 2008, it was acquired by Brookfield Asset Management and in 2012, it merged into HomeServices of America.
Traditional Home was a design and decorating magazine that targeted affluent readers. The magazine was published by the Meredith Corporation and celebrated the pleasures of modern life through the prism of classic taste. It was the best-selling shelter magazine at newsstands for nine consecutive years. Launched in 1989 under the direction of founding editor Karol DeWulf Nickell, Traditional Home was published eight times a year until 2017 when it was redesigned to produce six volumes per year. It reached 4.5 million readers. The magazine moved to quarterly publication effective with the Fall/Winter 2019 issue.
Southern Living is a lifestyle magazine aimed at readers in the Southern United States featuring recipes, house plans, garden plans, and information about Southern culture and travel. It is published by Birmingham, Alabama–based Southern Progress Corporation, a unit of IAC's Dotdash Meredith.
Gardening Australia is an Australian lifestyle television program which suggests and promotes organic and environmentally friendly ways of gardening. It is created by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and airs on ABC TV, as of 2021 in an hour-long weekly show each Friday evening.
Kelly Lynne Moran is an American actress, artist, author and builder. The Washington Times newspaper wrote "she is also one heck of a designer." She has a degree in Fine Arts from Frostburg State University, graduating in 1982 and continually trains at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, Maryland, painting in the 16th century Dutch Old Masters' style. She continued her education at the George Washington University in 1995 studying Landscape Design and the USDA Graduate School studying Botany, and Horticulture. Working as a landscape designer in the Washington, D.C., metro area landed Moran on Fox 5 News in 2002, at 5:00 doing gardening segments.
Better, also known as The Better Show, is a syndicated lifestyle and celebrity focused daytime talk show that aired in syndication from 2007 to 2015. It aired weekdays on 160 stations across the United States. The program was produced and distributed by Meredith Corporation. The Better Show got its name from and is based on Meredith's flagship publication, Better Homes and Gardens. The show also tapped its other magazines' experts in home, shelter and parenting.
Patricia Ruth Fisher-Smith Welsh, also known as Pat Welsh and Patricia Fisher, (1929) is an American television performer, columnist, garden editor, public speaker, and author.
Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate LLC is an international real estate company which began operations in July 2008.
Sherry Chris is president and CEO of Expansion Brands Portfolio at Realogy Holdings Corporation, which includes Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, and ERA, divisions of Realogy Corporation.