Here’s the Dirt on Gardening Web Sites: It’s a Jungle Out There

I like gardening, but I don’t know much about plants. And my local nursery isn’t much help. So when I went looking for a drought-resistant, evergreen shrub for a sun-drenched parking strip in front of my house, I booted up my computer and turned to the World Wide Web.

I found dozens of attractive possibilities and several nearby wholesalers specializing in native plants that stocked the shrubs I wanted.

But my greatest discovery was the flourishing world of online gardening. Gardeners have been trading seeds and composting tips for years, and some of the first big Web sites were gardening sites. But unless you’ve checked recently, you might be surprised by the breadth and depth of information now available to help you design, supply, plant, fertilize, prune and nurture your very own garden of Eden.

Newcomers to online gardening will be tempted to go first to one of the many search engines like Yahoo and Excite. But type in “gardening” and you’ll come up with 45,000 or more sites. Do you really want to wade through all that?

Another approach is to go straight to one of the popular commercial gardening sites. These sites, however, are often disappointing because they focus on the plants and tools they sell.

Garden Escape (https://www.garden.com), for example, has an intriguing Plant Finder. But when I filled in the blanks in search of a drought-resistant evergreen shrub I was looking for, I come up with “no matches.” (I eventually got my answers by conducting a similar computer search on Time Life’s Plant Encyclopedia available online at Virtual Garden (https://www.vg.com).

The other problem with many commercial sites is that they don’t want you to leave their space so they seldom offer links to other sites. That’s a major disservice because you don’t get access to the richness and diversity the Web has to offer.

Start instead with a Web site that serves the particular climate and soil conditions of your region and isn’t afraid to send you to other sites for more information.

For Southern Californians, one of the best places to start is Digitalseed (https://www.digitalseed.com). The site was developed more as a hobby than as a business by several Web designers in San Diego. They offer tips about gardening in the hot, dry, alkaline soil of the region.

More important, Digitalseed includes a short but powerful list of other gardening sites. There are links for orchid lovers, herb fanatics and dutiful composters. Advertisers don’t get preference as they do on many commercial sites.

There is a link, for example, to the University of California’s Pest Management Project site, which offers ecologically sound ways to deal with pest problems specific to California.

You could also turn to the Ortho Problem Solver (https://www.sierra.com/sierrahome/gardening/ortho), a commercial site. The problem solver is comprehensive and well done. But you might be a little suspicious when the site recommends spraying Ortho Seven Liquid to combat your moth problems.

If Digitalseed’s list is not comprehensive enough for you, the site offers a pointer to the Gardening Launch Pad (https://www.tpoint.net/neighbor/). This site has 1,700 gardening sites divided into 60 categories. Look up bamboo, for example, and you’ll find 17 sites dedicated to that elegant, versatile plant.

If you’d like to chat with other gardeners, start with Garden Gate (https://www.prairienet.org/ag/garden/homepage.htm), which, unfortunately, you won’t find on the Digitalseed site. This site has a list of Usenet discussion groups where gardeners get together to discuss the fine points of vegetable gardening, composting and other weighty issues.

If you are an armchair gardener, try a section of Garden Gate called “Down the Garden Path,” which guides you through famous gardens around the world. But there’s something unsatisfying about looking at thumbnail photos of gardens. The best Web sites will make you eager to get outdoors and get your hands dirty.

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Leslie Helm can be reached via e-mail at leslie.helm@latimes.com. Please send Internet site suggestions to cutting.edge@latimes.com.