Garden Center Listing?

Thanks Ecrane,

I just tried the search and it says not valid. Oh well

Love the new forum for local resources. A category for horticultural supplies might be helpful. An example is there are places in my area to buy mulch, rocks, and soil but they are not a garden center and also a couple of Sod Farms. Farm Supply stores are great places to find large commercial size bags of fertilizers, alfafa pellets, horticultural supplies, and Muck boots. There is a fellow out by my house that has a business selling bulk earthworm castings. I wanted to add some of these places but did not know which heading is correct.

In the review area information what type of plants or items they may have and maybe what $$$ category they fall under would be helpful for me. For instance, in my area Trees by Touliatos is very pricey but has trees / speciman shrubs / plants that you probably could not find anywhere else locally while Digger O' Dell Nursery is a reasonably priced large nursery with a good selection but it is not likely you will find the highly unusual there. Several nurseries in this area are limited to bamboo / grasses or daylilies but they are by appointment only.
Thanks so much,

Loretta



This message was edited Nov 30, 2006 10:40 PM

Would allied companies be in a not yet created category, or would they go in Nurseries and Greenhouses. This one http://www.wormsway.com/stores.asp?m=o doesn't sell any plants, but they do sell to the gardener. Products are pest control, irrigation supplies, fertilizers, containers, etc.

Chris

Chris, I think we've got them in the Watchdog - until Dave gives us his thoughts on how to handle the companies that sell via retail and mailorder, let's hold off on them (especially since we don't yet have a category for non-plant sellers either.)

Oooo. OK. I must have missed that post. I added The Exotic Plumeria this morning which has a web and brick and mortar presence. I guess it's more of a dirt and aluminum presence, but you get the point. :-)

Chris

chuckle....brick/mortar or dirt/aluminum - what's the difference???? No problem - I'd just rather not have too many of them slipped in until we figure out how to handle the overlap between this and the GWD.

Baa, remember that this is a brand new feature and mapping of entries outside the U.S. is a very new thing for me.

Getting coordinates into the system is the first step. We can then map them when I finish the work on that part of the system (and I spent several hours yesterday, and will spend more hours today on it). When it's finished you'll be able to view the entries closest to you, no matter where in the world you are.

dave

Terry, your #5 is finished. You'll find it from the main admin page (click on "Report" after "Local Resources".)

dave

Thanks!!!!

Terry,

Your #3 is finished. It's neat to see a map of a public garden in Thailand (thanks to the coordinates from palmbob)!

http://davesgarden.com/local/view/239/

I did some re-working on this feature this morning and am now including the zipcode lookups directly into the Advanced Search. So, you can now give your zipcode and limit it to u-picks, etc.

dave

Great work! I was going to try and help out and add a few last night from home, but Google Maps is very painful over dial-up. I should have just added the entries without coordinates but I got distracted.

I really like the name "Garden Hot Spots"!

- Brent

To whoever it was that added the lat/long info to my two entries for Canadale Nurseries and Wild Things Plant Farm, thanks - you're an angel! I didn't have time to complete that the day I entered them, just went back to do it now, and they are done!

--Ginny

This message was edited Dec 1, 2006 12:09 PM

I wrote a script to find some lat/lon coordinates and I run those daily. The ones that the script can't figure out, I do manually (Terry might have done some, too!)

dave

Well, whoever did mine, thanks to you, also!

You and the rest of the admins are almost too good to be true Dave. Thanks!

--Ginny

I'll add my thanks...just noticed that my missing lat/long were added in by someone too. Thanks! (even if it was the computer that did it!)

Dave, the search enhancements aren't working quite right (or at least they're not working the way I thought they would.)

For starters, when I plug in any ZIP code, all entries come up. Here's an example: http://davesgarden.com/local/advanced.php?zip=74055

If I try to narrow it down to a category, I still get all the entries in that category (regardless of location or proximity to the ZIP code): http://davesgarden.com/local/advanced.php?zip=74055&state=xx&country=XX&type=publicgardens&search_text=&sorter=distance&submit=Search

Also, if I click on the "Location" column heading to re-sort it, it sorts based on the city name, instead of sorting by country, then state, then city: http://davesgarden.com/local/advanced.php?state=&country=&type=publicgardens&search_text=&submit=Search&sorter=cities

I think the new "local" feature is terrific. It would be great, also, to expand it down the road to include gardens that are open to the public.

There already is a category for public gardens

Terry,

That's the way designed it. Doing the zipcode search still gives you all entries, but it just sorts by proximity to that zipcode...

dave

Well.....maybe it's just me, but that seems messy and a little confusing - when I entered my ZIP, I expected to see a narrowed "slice" of the entire list, not everything. As the list grows, I think this could become more problematic.

Can we limit it to a (50 or 100 or 150 mile) radius? I think the GWD zip code search is limited to 150 miles. Ideally, the radius would be flexible, so if the user wanted to narrow in on a really small area, they could, or they could broaden it to get the bigger picture.

Also, the results for my ZIP look like this: http://davesgarden.com/local/advanced.php?zip=37128

Could we add a column for category, so we can see everything in a given area, but group all garden centers, public gardens, etc. together?

I noticed the addition of pumpkin&Christmas trees locations last night. I understand why you would not want duplicates. I tried to enter a particular business into the Christmas Tree category after having already entered it into the pumpkin/corn patch category.

On the other hand if I had just moved to Clayton, California this week and I needed a Christmas Tree, I would not be able to find this particular location (the best place in that local area) on DG. Here's the link in the pumpkin category: http://davesgarden.com/local/view/595/

Something I noticed in an alphabetical listing of company names, "White Christmas" heads the list because of the quotation marks:
http://davesgarden.com/local/view/525/

Happenstance, that definitely underscores the need for multiple categories for a few of these listings.

Sorry about the quote marks around "White Christmas", but that's the way the business name actually reads, as best I could tell. The cynic in me wonders if they did it to overcome alphabetical listing issues (The names starting with "W" would typically be near the bottom of the list.)

I think you nailed the reason for the quotes Terry. Try wading through all the AAA business listings in the yellow pages. :-)

For some odd reason, I'm having trouble adding the local nurseries in my area. Everytime I try I end up with a message like the one rcn48 posted above. I have IE7 and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks for the help!

Jess

Looks like it's an IE-specific error, and it's back. Can you change browsers to try again? I know Dave is busy with some projects today, and may not be able to fix this until later tonight or tomorrow.

Lol, I'm at work goofing off and I'm not sure the IT guy would want me to download and install a different browser. I'll try at home later. I know how busy admins are and I thank you for everything you do! Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.

Hi,
Thanks so much for this wonderful feature it will be extremely helpful particularly for those of us who live in parts of the country such as New England where you might consider multiple states to be your local shopping/visiting area and there has yet to be one source to go to. I am wondering when this feature is tweaked if it would be possible to somehow have a link-search to a calendar of events that are held at the listed nurseries, arboretums, ect. For example my local arboretum (Polly Hill) has the most incredible workshops/lectures throughout most of the year, all of my local nurseries have special event weekends Donaroma's nursery this weekend will be celebrating Christmas in Edgartown with wet wreath, boxwood tree work shop, bonsai demo with Saki, ect. Thanks kt

So we don't lose track of shadowgirl's ideas...

I can add categories, but I can't edit them once I submit them. I want to be pretty cautious and get 'em right the first time to save Dave a lot of aggravation to change them later. Also we are quickly running into the issue of overlap - a garden center might carry rock, mulch, compost, fertilizer, etc. along with nursery plants. Until Dave figures out a way to check off more than one category, I'm hesitant to create more categories if it will cause us re-work to go back through listings that need additional categories added.

In the meantime, let's talk about a good, universal name for a garden/hort company that specializes in non-plant material. Some ideas:

Supplies
Garden (or Horticultural) Supplies
Garden (or Horticultural) Products
or ?????



At this point, Dave has chosen to not add specific plant categories (like we have in the GWD.) Information on hours, specialties, etc. make for excellent comments, as would noting the ease of (or lack of) access, parking, other nearby attractions, etc.

Lots of TODOs here... Terry, would you mind making a bulleted list of items for me, so I can knock them out one by one?

dave

I tried to inclulde a telephone number and an email address so if anyone were 'serious' about going to a place, they would give them a call first to find out hours they're open, etc. I know if I was going to a completely new place, and I had to drive an hour or more, I'd call them to make sure they would be open.

Dave, I started a new to-do's thread here: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/675565/

Thanks :)

Do you want Nature Preserves added? Most are classified as display or public gardens but I didn't really know if you would classify them as public gardens or parks? Would you want to include them?

Mystic, I think we do...I was thinking the same thing (and mentally wondering how to classify them.) I was actually toying with adding hiking trails, too. Any thoughts on how to lump or split 'em?

Terry, I would say to put them together Nature Preserves and Hiking Trails, but most of the parks have hiking trails too. Nature Preserves are mainly for hiking trails etc so I think it would really fit better with that.

Terry, I added Lichterman Nature Center today. It is a preserved, in the middle of town, nature center with paths, flowers, trees, nature. It might need to be changed if you add 'nature centers'.


Pat

I added a few arboreta and noticed the US National Arboretum wasn't listed yet. I checked the box for arboretum and public garden. Later, I saw that it was already listed as a public garden...oop. Oh, one more thing, on the form 'add an entry', there's typo where you enter a link for current events. Sorry if this is mentioned earlier in the thread, I haven't kept up.

Thanks, claypa! You and I must have spotted the duplicate at about the same time - I added "moving comments between entries" to Dave's to-do's here: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/675565/

And I think someone mentioned on that thread when they spotted the wording above the calendar of events box, which currently reads "events of events"....ooops ;o) It's good to know folks are observant, though!

I saw Dave's to do thread, the post about changing comments... I saw that I could edit the USNA listing, and removed where I clicked Public Garden. So now it's on each list (Arb, and Pub. Gdn.) but only once. That's better, at least. I'll do whatever should be done, let me know please and Thank you!

There's more to these listings than meets the eye at first glance, it's an extremely valuable function for Dave's Garden!

But you knew that... :)