Cold Climate Gardening

• “Gardening Goes Digital: Blogs are blossoming as gardeners turn to online journals to share ideas and progress” by Pam Adams in the Peoria Journal Star, April 5, 2008. “Garden blogging is growing so fast it’s disconcerting for Kathy Purdy of upstate New York, one of the pioneers of garden blogging.

  Purdy started Cold Climate Gardening - www.coldclimategardening.com - in August 2002 for several different reasons. She wanted to share lessons she had learned about growing ‘hardy plants for hardy souls,’ as her Web site states.

  But she also wanted to connect with other gardeners. As a homeschooling mother with a large family, it was easier for her to start a blog than to find a sitter and drive 15 miles to a garden club meeting.

  The gardening blog directory, Blotanical, www.blotanical.com, now lists more than 500 garden blogs, Purdy says via e-mail. ‘That’s close to a hundred-fold increase from when I got started almost six years ago.’ ”

• “How Does Our Gardening Grow? Green thumbs are proliferating from an unexpected source” by Juan Martinez in Publishers Weekly, February 25, 2008. “‘Blogs such as GardenRant and ColdClimateGardening are making it easier for young gardeners to share information and experiences. As new gardeners appear, they have an easier time finding how-to information through these routes.’” (quoting Jeff Gillman)
• “Put down the shovel and blog” by Jane Milliman in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 16, 2008. “For our area, the clear standout is Kathy Purdy’s coldclimategardening.com. Purdy lives in Chenango Forks, near Binghamton, and works full-time to fill her site with articles, opinions and book reviews that are well-written, well-researched — and well-read, judging by the number of comments left behind.”
• “The Grounded Gardener: What’s growing? The number of garden blogs” by Marty Wingate in Seattle Post-Intelligencer (online). last updated December 5, 2007.
• “Virtual Gardening in the Blogosphere” by Doug Green in The American Gardener November/December 2007, pp. 19-21. “Garden blogs have sprung up like weeds over the last few years–here’s what you need to know to tune in to and participate in this worldwide online community.” Besides Cold Climate Gardening, blogs profiled include Doug Green’s Garden, Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas, Garden Rant, May Dreams Gardens, This Garden is Illegal, and You Grow Girl.
• Fourteen Garden Bloggers to Watch Stuart Robinson of Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas writes: “There are garden bloggers and then there are the movers and shakers in the garden blogosphere. People who go beyond their own blog and can create something more of value within the blogosphere that either adds more value to it or makes it easier to be part of it. . . . All this thought has challenged me to create this list. These are the true movers in our category and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next…”
• “Site to See” in Northern Gardener March/April 2007, p. 11:
  Thousands of garden blogs lurk on the Internet, and like blogs on other subjects, most are too personal or too neglected to be of much use to anyone who is not on a first-name basis with the author. But the cold climate gardening blog, maintained by New York gardener Kathy Purdy and friends, is worth visiting.
  For those who are not Internet junkies, a Web log or blog is an online journal. The author–and anyone can be an author in this format–writes entries and posts the mini-essays to the blog, which is open to any and all Web wanderers. Bloggers discourse on politics, music, entertainment, and yes, gardening.

  Coldclimategardening.com does blogging right. The essays are intelligent and on-topic. They are real essays, not rants. They also are rich in references to other sources, which are just a click away. If a book or Web site is mentioned, Purdy provides a link. For instance, an entry on the history of hardiness zone maps allows readers to link to the scholarly article that prompted the post as well as to an alternative zone map. The blog is personal. Readers learn that Purdy is a neglectful seedstarter, has 12 children (who has time for seeds!), and has gardened for 15 years. But it’s not too personal-no health reports or political opinions. Her fellow contributors live all over the United States but garden in USDA Zone 4.
  Purdy describes the site as a virtual garden club. While not as much fun as a real garden club, these are gardeners you might enjoy meeting. -M.L.S. (reprinted with permission)

• In connection with the garden blog directory, I was quoted by Dean Fosdick in an article for the Associated Press on gardening and computers. This article was published in various newspapers in late January 2006 and can be found online here, among other places: Garden doctor is always in when you have a computer
• “Sowing on the Web,” in People, Places, Plants Early Spring 2005, p. 56
• “Web Finds,” in Horticulture Spring Bonus Issue 2005, p. 27

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