Introducing PlantScout!

Last week I gave an introduction to PlantScout at this thread: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/452833/

Today it is my pleasure to announce its launch! Yesterday we started accepting applications from companies to join PlantScout, and we already have 5 companies.

# American Meadows
# Brugmansias etc
# Buried Treasures
# J.L. Hudson, Seedsman
# Onalee's Home-Grown Seeds & Plants

Also, Johnny's Selected Seeds, as well as Pinetree Garden Seeds have both committed to participating. We also have light commitments from other companies. We have only contacted about 25 companies, so far, so we expect this list to grow very large within the coming months. By the time January comes around, we hope to have the PlantScout to be flush with information about where to buy most any plant.

Fun fun fun!!!

dave

That's so cool :oD
Will there be participants from Europe and other parts of the world Dave, or only from the USA?

Forgot to mention: BentleyGardens.com has committed to participating, too. http://davesgarden.com/gwd/c/2398/

dave

Such exciting times ahead with this new resource :)

Great job as usual, dave!

Very cool! Is there a link where we can check it out and see how it works?

The PlantScout tab should appear at the top. Do you see the tab?

dave

Duh!

Yup... I see it ;o)

The tab has been available for Terry and me for a week or so now, and I figured maybe I had forgotten to enable it for everyone else!!

Awesome, Dave. What a great idea.

We'd love to have PlantScout be truly global. Since we're not trying to provide prices or size of plants or seed packets, it avoids the barriers that might have prevented us from going international.

Dave, I am wondering if we need to indicate each company's country in the summary list, so users will know which vendors are in their own country before they go any further...

Yes, we can easily cross reference the company's Garden Watchdog profile (which contains their location) with PlantScout.

dave

Wow!!! I've already been checking it out. What an awesome resource!

This message was edited Sep 1, 2004 11:22 AM

Dave
As with everything else on this site it is totally amazing!!!! I can hardly wait until we have lots of vendors I am sure they will be jumping aboard real soon!!!

It works like a charm and I am in love with it all ready!!!!

Thanks so much for all that you do!!!! You are as always incredible!!!!

Dave, fyi -- my resolution is 800X600, and the new tab causes the Botanary tab to run off the end. This means I have to scroll horizontally to see all of that last tab, and the banner ends instead of stretching the full length of the bar.

Dave, another FYI. I looked at some of the company pages. The one for Onalee's Home-Grown Seeds & Plants has a duplicate link.

Darius, that glitch may be occurring because Onalee hasn't uploaded her information yet, but I'll watch it to see what happens.

We aren't limiting participation PlantScout to any specific group. Any seed or plant vendor can participate, assuming they have a positive or neutral rating when they join (or no ratings yet - we won't hold a lack of feedback against a company.) We included DG subscribers (some of which are DG store owners, some have independent websites) in the first group since we figured these business owners are most familiar with DG - and as subscribers, they should get the first opportunity to participate in the new feature. (If we missed anyone, it was purely an oversight - please let us know!)

Way too cool! Thank you, Dave.

Yes, way2cool! Thanks, Dave!

I have a question about searching a specific vendor rather than searching for a specific plant. What I mean is, say there does happen to be an Israeli vendor join and they are the only Israeli vendor who has joined. Soooo I'm thinking to myself that I'd like to see what's available locally before i go through the hassle of trying to get it internationally. So I want to browse just that one vendor's products. Is that possible? Or can we only serach for specific plants and see who on the list has those?

Did that make sense? LOL

Speaking of international vendors/subscribers. Would it be possible to change the international codes to a 4-letter abbreviation rather than the 2-letter abbrv used now? I'm in Israel and already since I joined a little more than 2 weeks ago, there has been a flood of confusion with people thinking I'm in Illinois. If someone looks at the geographical info for someone else, they will be able to see immediately if that person is in the U.S. or abroad simply by the number of letters in the abbreviation. They might then need to read more in the member info if they don't know that ISRL is the abbrv for Israel, but at least they won't nag and complain that said Israeli member isn't entering zone info or is advising about tropical plants when they supposedly live in a snowy climate. LOL

By the way, Israel/Illinois wouldn't be the only pair to get confused. What about Georgia (US) and Georgia (Soviet)? Or Arizona and Azerbaijan? etc etc etc

In any case, it's just a suggestion. I know you have more important things to do, but perhaps you could consider it when (LOL) you have a free moment? :-)

-Julie

BTW, for those of you who haven't visited PlantScout since its launch, we now have 25 (or more) companies participating, and many more preparing their items so they can join.

More than 10,000 plants, seeds and bulbs to look through - several woody ornamental and shade trees, plus hostas, hydrangeas, waterlilies, bulbs, roses, flower and veggie seeds, herbs, perennials, brugs, hibiscus, and other tropicals. It's definitely worth taking a second look, especially as the days grow shorter and colder, and our thoughts start turning to next year's gardens!

I just cruised through the companies a couple of hours ago...amazing how it's grown already!