Behind the scenes of Rootopia

Over the past decade, Rootopia developed with the collaboration of many partners — built with research, founded on fun and delivered with heart.

From five years of field observations and focus groups, we know that many middle schoolers aren’t interested in gardening, claiming “gardening is for little girls.” Our content analysis of marketing materials and garden-related products backs up these findings. Much of the marketing is for Pre-K and lower elementary students, and that can alienate slightly older kids.

We facilitated a youth-led iterative process with engaged partners to develop 44 uplifting and botanically accurate Rootopia characters. We engaged youth and did our research at each step:

• Engaged a youth artist for 5 years to create illustrations.
• Trained youth to conduct focus groups with youth to get feedback on characters.
• Reviewed taxonomies of eyes, mouths and noses across different races and ethnicities.
• Facilitated multi-year iterative reviews with youth, educators and 50+ engaged partners nationally.
• Conducted cross-disciplinary literature review on facial perceptions from biology, communications, marketing, psychology and neuroscience.
• Piloted characters on seed packets in ES Meals and OSU Project PLANT home-gardening kits.

Currently, we work with OSU’s Advantage Accelerator program to create a robust and successful growth strategy for decades to come!

Partners and collaborators make the Rootopia magic. Do you want to work with us? We want to hear from you!