GIE Media's Horticultural Group has launched its first-ever consumer magazine, A Garden Life. The innovative new media publicationwill be delivered to consumers as a free app for tablet platforms. The premiere issue is available for download now on iTunes/Apple Store ... or for the Android.

Each issue of A Garden Life will explore and celebrate the concept of "life as a garden." GIE Media Chairman, Richard Foster, describes the magazine's mission: "To create a community of consumers with shared values and interests in lifestyle subject areas such as healthy living, that includes growing and preparing clean food, contributing to community, exploring travel and adventure, art and literature, as well as having a passion for diverse aspects of nature and gardening." GIE will publish six issues of A Garden Life in 2012 (March, May, June, July/August, September/October, November/December) exclusively via iTunes, Android Market and the web. The model for A Garden Life breaks new ground for B2B media companies by creating a free consumer magazine designed to generate consumer sales for its business magazine readers. Prior to launching AGL, GIE Media reached out to its readers in the garden center retail market to promote the free app to their homeowner consumer customers. Hundreds of retailers across North America responded and will benefit from a built-in geocoding function that will point AGL readers to their local garden centers to source products they find in the publication.

A Garden Life will also utilize the latest social media tools to stimulate active reader engagement with its editors and contributors, as well as with one another, be it across town or around the world. "Tablet mobile technology – and the social media it facilitates – can stimulate sharing of ideas through direct one-to-one connections by email and text messaging, and simple tools for sharing imagery, audio and video," says Foster.

A Garden Life has a companion website that will offer the magazine app content to consumers who do not yet use tablet technology. The website will include deep databases of horticultural products such as perennials, annuals, succulents, grasses, trees, ornamentals and lawn and garden hard-goods items. GIE will also offer consumer readers a regular electronic newsletter of garden center product insights at no charge.