Gardeners aren't the kind of people you'd expect to find on the Internet. But then, like most people involved in agriculture, they have the entire winter off, right?
Perhaps that's why gardening sites are popping up on the Web this spring like dandelions in my yard. While many of the sites are there to sell you something related to gardens, there are also quite a few whose whole purpose is to help you feed the body and soothe the soul.
I'm not much of a gardener, but to me, the granddaddy of garden sites is the New York Botanical Gardens, which is part of the Virtual Garden site on Time's Pathfinder site (http://pathfinder.com/vg). Located, of all places, in the Bronx, the New York Botanical Gardens is an excellent resource for information about house and yard plants.
The Virtual Garden allows you to search several Time-Life publications, including a complete plant encyclopedia. There are also Sunset and Southern Living magazines, which have large garden sections.
Across the big pond, there's an equally extensive botanical database at Britain's Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG), Kew in London (http://www.rbgkew.org.uk). The RBG uses an FTP site for its numerous articles and publications. Like the New York site, the RBG is aimed at the serious horticulturist.
Pages based on interests
For the weekend gardener, try Cheryl Trine's on-line magazine GardenNet (http://trine.com/GardenNet). Here, in ''The Ardent Gardener'' section, you can read 21 issues of Over the Fence, an on-line newsletter about gardening. Or you can explore the extensive links to other garden and horticulture sites.
Also worth a stop is GardenWeb (http://www.gardenweb.com), another on-line magazine where Barry Glick will answer even the most arcane horticultural question, you can exchange unusual specimens in the Garden Exchange or follow the numerous links in the Spider's Web, or even do a crossword puzzle.
At the Weekend Gardener (www.chestnut-sw.com/weekend.htm), you'll also see a good collection of links to other sites. (My travels on the Web always amaze me; there's even a www.daylilies.com)
One of the fancier commercial sites is Garden Escape (http://www.garden.com). This on-line garden shop asks you to register so that it can track your purchases, the proper delivery time for plants, even returns. You can ask it to help design a garden, and it will suggest plants (which you can buy right there, of course).
While Garden Escape has a certain robotic feel, anyone who enjoys visiting an old-fashioned gardening center, should visit John Shelley's Garden Center and Nursery near York, Pa. Rather than drive across two states, you can find it at http://www.gdnctr.com.
Exploring this site, you learn about Shelley's former career in advertising and his one-eyed cat and get lots of useful gardening information. Shelley has quite an extensive and sophisticated site, with anecdotes about his business and an archive of his newspaper ads, which are valuable advice columns.
Visiting Garden Escape is like browsing a catalog; viewing Shelley's site is like hanging out at the local garden shop.
Stop for organic specialists
Organic farmers should stop by http://www.whitneyfarm.com. Whitney farms in Portland specializes in organic gardening and has some interesting info in the Ask Uncle Malcolm page. You can e-mail questions, which Malcolm might choose for answering in the section.
And we can't forget our own local gardening extravaganza, the Cincinnati Flower Show. The show's over, but you can still visit the web site (http://www.fuse.net/FlowerShow). The ''Cyber Garden Cafe'' is still there, although much of the flower show information (like the show itself) is gone. There's a few gardening links, though.
Seems like all the major companies are here (www.jacksonperkins.com for roses, garden.burpee.com for vegetables, www.toro.com for roto-tillers, www.ortho.com for chemicals), as well as dozens, perhaps hundreds, of amateur gardeners who have posted pages of links, advice or tours of their prized gardens.
Don't believe me? Visit Tom Robb in his toolshed at http://hap-pc.org/~trobb/index.html, or take a pictorial tour through Canadian Colin Moock's backyard garden (this guy is far too young to have built such a sanctuary!).
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at cbrewer@enquirer.com.