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About Dave's Garden
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Hello, I'm Dave and welcome to my garden. This site began back in August of 2000, when I realized the world really needed an open and friendly atmosphere in which to nurture a community of both experienced and new gardeners and farmers. Since then I've added a lot of features.
As a new member or visitor, I'd like to take you on a short tour of Dave's Garden and show you around a bit. At any time, please let me know if I can be of service to you. What is Dave's Garden?Dave's Garden (or, DG, as it has come to be known) is a website where friends share their triumphs and dilemmas in their gardens and their lives. DG is also a place for gardeners to share seeds or plants with other gardeners. We also specialize in sharing information for the benefit of other gardeners, and we use DG to make our own lives easier.DG has 419,018 members. In the past 7 days, 1,006 signed up. (Our membership has grown by 0.24% this past week). In May, 2008, 1.86 million unique visitors came to our website. DG is probably the largest website devoted exclusively to gardening in the world. What will I find most interesting at DG?DG has so much to offer, you are certainly going to find something which will have you coming back daily, as well as making you proud to tell your friends and family about your new gardening home on the net. Here are the features you can access right away:The PlantFilesWe have 170,847 plants and 219,282 images listed in our plant database, and the number grows each day. By combining useful information with images of the plants that each of our members are most familiar with, we are creating an impressive and authoritative compilation of the most commonly grown plants from across the world. Take a look. You can browse by plant type or search for a particular plant. You're sure to learn something new with each visit!The Garden WatchdogThe Garden Watchdog is a database of gardening-related mail order companies, rated by the members of Dave's Garden.Through this feature, consumers with access to the internet are able to look up companies who they may be considering doing business with, and read the comments left by other customers. Members of Dave's Garden may add comments about any company with whom they have done business, and rate their experience as positive, neutral, or negative. As of this moment, we have a total of 6,609 companies listed, and 44,900 comments have been posted. PlantScoutPlantScout helps you instantly locate the vendors who sell the exact plant (or seed or bulbs) you're looking for. You can search for a plant by its common or botanical name, see what real-life gardeners say about it, then go straight to the source to buy it.No more hours wasted looking through catalogs or scouring the internet to find a source for that elusive plant you've got your heart set on. When you're ready to buy, PlantScout does the work for you by searching through 29,404 plants, seeds, bulbs, and cuttings offered by the top-rated mail-order companies around the world. The Garden BookwormThe Garden Bookworm is designed with book-loving gardeners in mind. You can browse for a great new gardening book (for yourself, or another gardener in your life), and write a review of your favorite garden books.As of this moment, we have a total of 3,331 books listed, and 1,880 book reviews have been posted. Botanary1. A blended word, derived from the phrase "botanical dictionary". 2. A reference containing an alphabetical list of 20,491 botanical words, with information given for each word, usually including the etymology (i.e., history and/or origin) and pronunciation.At Botanary, you can look up a plant name, discover its meaning and find a guide to pronouncing it. But take it from W.T. Stearn, an authority on the subject: "Botanical Latin is essentially a written language .... How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understood by all concerned..." Garden TermsHave you ever wondered about a particular gardening term or concept? Welcome to Garden Terms, a knowledge base of 3,410 garden terms compiled by gardeners and farmers from around the world.They've shared their plant knowledge and expertise in 4,568 definitions, tips, and techniques. The Gardener's JournalFor me, the most useful feature of DG is the Gardener's Journal. It is a one-of-a-kind free online tool which allows you to maintain your own journal of your garden (or anything else you want to keep track of). It allows you to enter updates to each item as often as you like, including images and notes. You can enter in TODO items, and group entries by category and other methods. It is a powerful and complex application. You can view other journals or start your own.The Gardener's Diary (or Blog)2,986 members have posted 50,782 entries to their garden blogs. These blogs are personal diaries where gardeners post their thoughts, ideas, plans and pictures for their gardens. You can have your own, too, for free!The Trading ToolsThe Tradelist lets you set up your list of plants and seeds you have (or will have) available to trade, as well as the items on your "wish list". When you engage in trading, it is helpful to have an online list of your haves and wants for other traders to view. The Tradelist is a handy way to do this and it's free to you as a DG member.The Tradetracker is an invaluable tool for keeping up with your trades, from start to finish. You can e-mail your traders with status updates, and see at a glance what trades you need to send or check up on. You can print out a list of trades to send to take with you when you go collect those plants or seeds and package them for shipping. Are you new to trading? We have a Trading Primer which will help you become a successful trader in record time. Our Community...Once you get your journal started, or get your Tradelist and Tradetracker ready to go, come join in the community activities at DG! Subscribed members have access to 252 forums which allow gardeners of every niche and interest to converse about their particular interests. The Welcome Mat is a great place to start.Where to visit next is entirely up to you. The Farm Life forum is active with farmers, and our market growers forum is a bustling place year-round. The European forum is a handy meeting place for our European friends. You'll find forums for everything from annuals and African Violets to water gardening and xeriscaping, and many subject areas in between, such as heirloom vegetables, greenhouses, bulbs, herbs, tomatoes, irises, daylilies, grasses and bamboo, trees and shrubs, houseplants, bonsai, roses, hoyas, brugmansias, and many others. Learn advanced techniques for plant propagation, trade seeds and plants, and even arrange international trades with gardeners in far away countries. Members here share their seeds and plants with other gardeners throughout the world. Trades are announced in our seed trading and plant trading forums. Subscribers post what they have or what they need, and other subscribers can contact them to make an exchange! A round-robin forum is used to arrange for a box of goodies to travel from participant to participant. Share decorating ideas, talk with other stay-at-home moms, pet lovers, share recipes and get advice and tips for canning and preserving your bounty. We have a slew of home and gardening forums available for your enjoyment, but only subscribed members may participate. Subscribe now and join in the thousand-plus posts which appear each day on DG's Forums. Chat with other DG subscribers in our twice-a-week live chat sessions. It's a great way to get to know other DG members! Members can send messages to each other using a secure internal system which keeps your real E-mail address secure, private and protected. In just the past few months, we've had secret swaps, a third annual photo contest, and several regional get-togethers. New activities are being planned for the months ahead. I hope you'll subscribe and join in the fun and excitement! What are people saying about DG?We have assembled a list of the more interesting and diverse testimonials from our members. Reading through them, you will hopefully gain a perspective on what makes this website different from any other.That's itAgain, thanks for touring Dave's Garden. I hope you enjoy using the free features and consider subscribing so you can enjoy the community benefits DG has to offer. Every day new members like you subscribe, and with each new subscriber we grow stronger. DG's slogan is "For Gardeners... By Gardeners", and this describes exactly what we are all about. This site is great because of the work our 419,018 members put in to make this the site that it is.
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