Recently in Gardening Media Category

Lowes makes a Landscape & Garden Planner available online to give avid gardeners and landscape enthusiasts a helping hand with ideas and information.

After a long registration process in which you can subscribe to Lowes newsletters, you finally get to the interactive Landscape and Garden Planner....Tutorial or Planner give you some choices to match your skill level and desire for adventure!

Size, zone map, design of your hardscapes are the basic choices, with objects such as patio, flower beds, furniture, as well as planters, ponds and pool round out your design. The Lowes Landscape & Garden Planner seems to work better on a PC than on a Mac... :-(

This online version of landscape planner software gives you a good introduction to landscape design.  You might want to move up to a personal computer software product to get more detailed...but some like to spend that amount of time wiggling their toes in the dirt :-) 

Developing Your Gardening System

What does an experienced organic gardener read to learn the nuts and bolts...rather, the soil and plants... of starting their gardening avocation?

Lorra, an ardent fan of Doug Green's blog, left the following comment on a very thought provoking blog essay about how Doug takes "the high road" in providing information and a positive approach to gardening for his readers.

In the early 1970s when Life presented me, a farmer’s daughter, with the opportunity to have a large garden I was delighted. With my Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening by Rodale Press, and Ruth Stout’s The No Work Garden Book away I went. My husband had grown up in one of the largest greenhouse gardening areas in the USA Midwest. There was no end to our disagreements on how to do it. Or rather, how I should do it. I scrounge leaves from the whole neighborhood (already bagged). Use them for mulch at home and in the park garden I am building – even tho, by some standards, “they look dirty”. Put no chemicals on Mother Earth, have bird houses, talk to Earl the Squirrel, and even allow the local opossum and/or raccoon to reside under the deck – as long as it doesn’t trod on my lemon lily.  (Douggreensgarden.com)

It's possible to learn bits and pieces about biodynamic gardening, organic farming and permaculture from blogs, but there is nothing like a comprehensive encyclopedic approach if you want to implement a whole SYSTEM such as gardening or landscaping as an avocation / or vocation.

What is your favorite sourcebook or system for putting all the participants in your little bit of Eden together?

Your comments are very welcome and they will help develop this resource center into a positive source  of information about landscaping solutions that are practical, environmentally nurturing and FUN!

Going green is seen as a fad by some...a recent development...and something for corporations and communities to deal with.  But conservation is at the heart of the green movement -- and conscientious folks have been at it for a very long time.  The following note is an excellent look at the heart of green . . .

...I bet it isn't easy being Green. I do not care to enumerate
the sacrifices I've made over the last 40 years in order to
meet my own standards for living as environmentally soundly as I can
manage. These are personal decisions made to mesh with my own value
system, which includes viewing other parts of the Earth and its
inhabitants as being equal to myself. The most I feel I can ask of others
is to become conscious of what they are choosing for themselves.
Frequently, awareness initiates change.

Our collegues have made us aware of the issues regarding hydrogels and
their soy alternatives, so I leave you with Maya Angelou's famous "When
you know better, you do better."

Regards,
Lois
LOIS de Vries' Garden Views
Thoughts on Gardening and Environmental Issues

Visit http://loisdevries.blogspot.com