From the category archives:

Blogging Art and Practice

My blogging code of ethics

February 10, 2009

I’ve been following with interest the debate that Pam at Digging started and which Mr. BrownThumb responded to. When I first started blogging back in 2002, you were lucky to find business people who knew what blogging was, and the idea that they would find enough value in your blogging about their product to give [...]

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Still More Garden Tweeters

December 17, 2008

Even as I was writing my first post about garden twitterers (aka tweeters), I was discovering new ones and agonizing about the ones I didn’t include. So here are some more. Plus, at the end, more hints about finding more on your own.

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Top Garden Twitterers

December 10, 2008

On his TwitTip blog Darren Rowse challenged people to come up with ten must-follow tweeters for their own particular niche. Naturally, I immediately thought of the garden tweeters.
I found it pretty challenging to decide on ten, because most people who tweet (that is, use Twitter) don’t limit themselves to one topic. So should I pick [...]

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Cold Climate Gardening garners a Mouse and Trowel nomination

April 26, 2008

Thank you for nominating this blog for Best Garden Blog Design. I’ve put a lot of thought and hours into the design, and I’m pleased that you appreciate my efforts.
According to the Mouse & Trowel website, “the Mouse & Trowel Awards were created by freelance writer and garden blogger Colleen Vanderlinden to honor and reward [...]

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Promote your blog with Moo mini cards

February 26, 2008

I just wrote a post for the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling suggesting that all attendees have some kind of card to trade at the meet-up. Moo mini cards are my hands-down favorite, but the price is kind of high.

These cards are a great way to promote your blog

Even if you’re not going to the Spring [...]

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The Garden Blog Presentation at the GWA Symposium

December 24, 2007

For those of you just joining us, this past fall I spent a week traveling to visit friends in Austin and to attend the Garden Writers Association symposium in Oklahoma City, where I agreed to be part of a team presenting on garden blogs. My original intention was to chronicle my entire trip from airport [...]

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Why don’t more older gardeners blog?

November 20, 2007

I was one of several garden bloggers inteviewed by Doug Green for an article on garden blogging for The American Gardener, which is published by the American Horticultural Society. I thought the article was a good overview for beginners on the topic, not going too deeply into the technology behind blogging but maintaining accuracy.
Really, you [...]

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Blogging Art and Practice: The website

October 16, 2007

I’m starting a new website to explain blogging and related technical matters in plain English. It’s called Blogging Art and Practice.
There are some things about blogging that involve technical skill or know-how. I call those practices. I strive to use the best practices, to make my blog easier for people to read, for search [...]

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Bah, humbug

August 9, 2007

In my sidebar under “Pecking Order” I used to have a Top 100 Gardening Sites badge. It was an amusing way to keep track of how I stood in relationship to other gardening websites–or so I thought. Recently, a quick check of Garden Rant’s Sitemeter revealed that they had far more visitors than this website, [...]

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Blogging tips wanted–for garden writers

July 6, 2007

As I mentioned recently, I’m going to Oklahoma City this fall to participate in a panel discussion on garden blogs. Yes, these professional writers, accustomed as they are to newspaper, magazine, television, radio, and even marketing work, are a bit intimidated and confused by blogging–so I’m told. Some are downright misinformed. So, along with Mary [...]

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Garden Blog Awards

March 23, 2007

Colleen of In the Garden Online is starting the Mouse and Trowel Awards, a program “to give recognition to those bloggers, website owners, and retail outlets that add vibrancy, convenience, or pure eye candy to our world.” Nominations are currently being accepted. Finalists will be announced on April 13th, and winners announced on May 13th.

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Photo credits for Cold Climate Gardening website header images

March 9, 2007

Some photos are more interesting when cropped severely
So many people expressed admiration for the header images that I decided to put them in the Cold Climate Gardening Flickr pool. You can view them here. It is a challenge to find images that are still interesting once you cut them down to 780×140 pixels. On the [...]

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A Tour of Cold Climate Gardening: What Changed on This Website and Why

March 4, 2007

Boredom isn’t enough to motivate me to redecorate my walls or my website
“Why are you changing your design?” some of my children asked, as I was making preparations for the Big Day. I could have said, for the same reason many people re-paint their walls or buy a new dress: tired of the same old [...]

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