The Garden State

Abraham Browning of Camden is given credit for giving New Jersey the nickname the Garden State. According to Alfred Heston's 1926 two-volume book Jersey Waggon Jaunts, Browning called New Jersey the Garden State while speaking at the Philadelphia Centennial exhibition on New Jersey Day (August 24, 1876).

Browning said that our Garden State is an immense barrel, filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, with Pennsylvanians grabbing from one end and New Yorkers from the other. The name stuck ever since.

http://www.state.nj.us/hangout_nj/200307_garden_state_p1.html

I am not sure, but I think ot is because most of New Jersey was farmland except for the oil refineries around the areas of Newark, Cartaret and Elizabeth and industry around the Camden area.

According to Sandra Bullock a.k.a Gracie Hart in Miss Congeniality, New Jersey is the called the Garden State because Oil and Petroleum Refinery State is too long for a license plate.

As far as I know, having grown up in New Jersey where my grandmother had a large vegetable garden during the Depression, the term "garden" refers to the fact that wonderful produce has been grown over the years in New Jersey.

If you have ever been to southern New Jersey you would know why it is called the Garden State. Wildwood and other towns of the south were beautiful when I used to visit them.

Agriculture and rich soil