Unlocking the world of gardening online

*Gate at Bok Tower Gardens

Finding a good link is so very important.

When I began by just picking out what looked cool or was on sale as the garden center, I quickly realized that those little tags they sometimes stick into a plant (if your lucky) usually just don't tell you a whole lot. So I quickly created a Garden Favorites folder, went to town on google, and snatched up absolutely any site I came across that I could get even the tiniest littlest something out of.

Sometimes you

need to just look up a plant and find out the basics. I like to useDave's Garden which is probably the

leading garden community website. People from all over the world post and comment about different types of plants. If you can't find it on Dave's Garden, it isn't to be found. A couple of really great Florida plant databases are Florida Gardening and Floridata, to only name a few.

Blogs are also essential to this newbie gardener. I have found a couple of great local bloggers, and it is worth its weight in mulch. Having a real live person who gardens in your zone/area can provide some vital information.

A few of my favorite local bloggers:

Hoe &

Shovel

Probably one of the best central Florida blogs. She has an extensive and informative site with great insight.

Graceful Cottage Gardening A local gardener who has a long history in this area, and whose seeds have even made the rounds all the way to my garden. More to come on that later.

The

Rainforest Garden

A wet, tropical garden of on envy. Tropicals and sub-tropicals are still mostly a mystery to me, but this guy has some really great ideas and knowledge.

DragonFly Garden A great south Florida blog, with lots of tropicals and a semi-informal design style that I'm working towards.

Central Florida Gardener

A wonderful site for industry news and really great articles.

Also, don't forget Facebook! Probably my favorite site in all of gardening is The Dirt on Facebook (Or their TBO.com blog) I can not begin to state how many tips, tricks, and ideas I have gotten from this site. It is a DAILY read for me.

Almost as good as the blogs themselves, are the comments. All of the blogs I read, started as a comment on someone else's blog.

So don't be afraid to explore, and get out there and fall down the rabbit hole of garden sites, blogs, and references.

What are your favorite Garden links or blogs?

*Picture taken at Bok Tower Gardens