Explore the on-line world of gardening

Remember when the only places to get your gardening questions answered were the local Master Gardener Plant Clinic and the out-of-date books in the local library? Maybe you got lucky and had a gardening neighbor who’d answer the occasional question, but that was always catch-as-catch-can. Well, those days are long gone because I venture to say everything you ever needed to know is available free on the Internet.

How-to-garden info

Here’s an example of the wealth of good gardening information on line. Say you want to learn to prune your boxwoods. Just Google “prune boxwoods” and voila. You’ll find a really helpful article by experts at the National Arboretum. In fact, almost all the questions I see posed on gardening email groups could be answered easily with a simple Google search. You can also go directly to the Master Gardener and Extension Service sources that pop up regularly in Google searches, like Maryland Home and Garden Information (www.hgic.umd.edu), Green Springs Garden in Virginia (www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/gsgp/), or Cornell Gardening (www.gardening.cornell.edu).
Unfortunately, one site that search engines love is About.com, which has a good gardening writer but the landscaping “expert,” not so much. He’s a big fan of the quacks who sell toxic home remedies for your yard. Those “all natural” ingredients can still be poisonous, like the tobacco juice recommended as a broad-spectrum killer by one very successful TV huckster.
DavesGarden.com is a very popular site that includes such jewels as Plant Files and Garden Watchdog, both chockful of gardener feedback - on growing specific plants or buying from specific mail order companies.
RenegadeGardener.com is a favorite of mine because the writer is a hands-on gardener who gives great advice in a uniquely off-beat and amusing style.
Now it’s time for some shameless self-promotion: I happen to have a brand new how-to site myself called Sustainable-Gardening.com. Check it out and let me know if it answers your questions about earth-friendly, low-maintenance gardening.

Forums and listserv

A wildly popular part of the DavesGarden world is its raft of forums, despite the $20-per-year subscription fee to access most of them. (Or for $5 you can try them for two months.) Last time I checked there were over 3,000 DavesGarden members in Maryland alone, so it’s easy to find local results. Forum topics include plant groups, specific plants, regions, wildlife gardening and composting. The forums contain an amazing wealth of real-gardener experience for your perusal.
And speaking of local results, the Takoma Horticultural Club administers a large Yahoo group that’s alive with Q&As, events, and the occasional plant give-away. The Voice’s own Pat Howell freely posts her expert advice there. For information about joining, go to Takomahort.org.

The gardening blogosphere

If you still associate the word “blog” with preadolescent girls writing about their cats, get over it. There are now blogs by experts on every imaginable subject, including real-life gardeners sharing their experiences. Locally, you can try WashingtonGardener.com, written by Takoma Hort Club president and magazine editor Kathy Jentz, or my own TakomaGardener.com. To find hundreds more from around the world, visit the Blog Directory at ColdClimateGardening.com. For a nice winter pick-me-up, I recommend visiting gardeners in Australia, California and particularly Texas, a real hotbed of gardenblogging.
Then there’s my favorite team blog, GardenRant. This recent winner of the coveted Garden Blog of the Year title in the 2007 Mouse&Trowel Awards (don’t laugh!) is written by myself and my partners in New York and California. Our many guest writers and regular commenters are an interesting mix of professionals and passionate amateurs, and we cover everything from pesticide dangers and global warming to nude gardening, with lots of book and magazine reviews thrown in. We try to live up to our ambitious slogan: “Uprooting the gardening world”.

Eye-popping inspiration

SouloftheGarden.com recently won the Mouse&Trowel’s Best Gardening Site Award and deservedly so. It’s a beauty of a site, with photos and Buddhist wisdom from a garden designer and teacher in Austin. And two blogs nominated for the Best Photography awards are In a Garden from Vancouver Island and Digging, another great product of Austin. They’re at http://sandy2.wordpress.com and Penick.net/digging respectively. Enjoy.
Susan Harris is a Master Gardener and a gardening teacher and writer. Visit her on line at TheGardeningCoach.com, TakomaGardener.com, GardenRant.com and Sustainable-Gardening.com.

No comments have been posted to this article.

Want to post a comment to this article? Click here.