| Website of the Week |
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ESC!Webs Site of the Week Week of April 25, 1999 National Gardening Association Main Web Site: http://www.garden.org This site is reviewed by special request -- for Barb. See, no computer site this week! On with the review... Well, Spring is finally here in full force -- I know because I washed my car this weekend -- by hand -- and so I felt it was time to review one of the more, um, down-to-earth websites. This site is run by the National Gardening Association, the publishers of the magazine, "National Gardening" among other things, and, I'd have to say, that this site is fairly deep. Not as flashy as I might expect, the site does offer a lot of advice for the gardener. Everything from getting your questions answered to actually offering a few courses online. Starting at their homepage, you are led to, first and foremost, a subscription form for their magazine. Boo to that. I believe they'd probably want to get you hooked on the information they can offer you before getting you hooked on the magazine. But I digress... Immediately under the subscription offer, however, the real information starts. First you are offered a free subscription to their e-mail newsletter "GardenWire". This newsletter offers the reader "free expert tips, gardening advice, special gardening alerts, and occasional offers for free stuff." Second you can learn about their online course selections. Lastly you are led to the Weekly Gardening Reports and the Tip of the Week, both of which allow you to get information based on your geographical region. Overall the home page is a decent mix of free information and pay information, but it is obvious that they want you to buy something from them. Moving to the menu, we start to get a little more in depth to what they can offer the typical gardener. As a new home owner and, by inference, a new gardener, I found some of the more interesting links to be the "1999 Buyer's Guide" and the Dictionary. However, I was particularly drawn to the fact that there was a lot of content geared just for kids. Specifically, Kid and Classrooms and the Youth Garden Grants. I really like to see organizations such as the NGA target children's imaginations and interests. I also liked their Q&A page. Though it's not instant interactive, they do promise a response to your gardening question within 48 hours. In addition, they post a "Question of the week" if you are just seeking any kind of information you can get -- like me. Finally, for those who can't get enough of gardening, there is an enormous list of links for anybody to stay busy reading up on gardening techniques. Anything from Alpine Plants to Vegetables they seems to have it covered by some link. So what don't I like about the site? I guess for an organization like the NGA, I was hoping for something more along the lines of a garden guide with pictures, tips and tricks and layout plans. In other words, something fancier. Of course I can find those things elsewhere, and I have. I also was a little disappointed by the format they took on some pages. For instance, on the dictionary page, you kind of have to know ahead of time what you are going to search for. As a budding gardener I don't always know what I need to look up until I find it. Finally, the site seems a little inconsistent. There are links on some pages which aren't on others. This leads me to believe that there may be a lot more to this site than I realize, but I'm just not sure because of the placement of the links. Overall a pretty interesting site. One that deserves to be bookmarked, but make sure it's not your only source for gardening information.
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