Human Flower Project

Friday, May 02, 2008

How Does Your Garden Reblog Grow?

With book clubs, meet-ups, and contests, the field of garden weblogging is now a thicket of online writers and photographers. Reblogging sites that collect posts from other blogs have helped bring the field into focus, partly by raising questions of copyright and profitability. Caren White, editor of one of the first garden reblogs—Garden Voices—talks about what’s happened and where it all may be heading.

Back in late 2005, we were contacted by a fellow named Joshua Mack about whether we’d like Human Flower Project to be included in a compendium of weblogs, a new venture called Garden Voices that was branching off of gardenweb.com. This popular spot where gardeners shared advice and photos had recently been purchased by iVillage, an online media group targeting women.

We were flattered and—as the flattered should always be—leery. Human Flower Project, many days, has little to do with gardening. And there was a more craven concern: Did it make sense to turn our unpaid labor and thought over to a for-profit enterprise, one featuring makeup tips and stories titled “Do You Cook Better Than His Mom?” —especially when we wouldn’t share in any of those profits? 

Eventually we settled on what seemed reasonable terms—Garden Voices would post our headlines and subheads but no photos or stories in full, provided they’d include a link back to Human Flower Project (other blogs apparently have other arrangements). There were a few bumps along the way, but eventually things smoothed out, thanks to Caren White of Middlesex, New Jersey. Caren, with her own A Gardening Year site, tends the Garden Voices reblog, and has been unfailingly accommodating.

Garden Voices, a compilation of hundreds of gardening weblogs, began in 2005
Image: Garden Voices

And so it went for over two years. Until late January 2008. For several weeks Garden Voices, which had grown into an international choir of weblogs, shriveled to a few squeaks and then went dumb.

When we wrote Caren to ask what was happening, even she was perplexed. Was Garden Voices malfunctioning, on hiatus or plain dead?

NBC/Universal had acquired iVillage for $600 million in 2006; by early this year there were lots of pieces moving on the corporate chessboard. The new management tried an iVillage TV show, which was cancelled in March. Thirteen iVillage employees lost their jobs earlier this year, and the remaining ones were shuffled from the New York offices to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The Healthology website (purchased for $17.2 million in 2005) was discontinued; would Garden Voices be next?

The site is back up and running now. But during the uncertain weeks of February we corresponded with Caren, taking the vagaries of the reblog as an opportunity to learn about Garden Voices. We asked Caren about the set-up of the site, its past (since in February its future was an open question) and her outlook on the gardening blogsphere. With many thanks to Caren, here you have it:

HFP: When did Garden Voices begin and how? What was the motivation behind the site?

Caren White: Garden Voices was begun late in 2005.  I can’t speak to how or why it was launched.  Joshua Mack who headed the team who developed and ran the site has left iVillage for personal reasons.  I do know that he had originally intended that it be a “blog about blogs”.  This wasn’t communicated clearly to me at first so I came up with my own concept of what it should be and ran with it.

When I began garden blogging in 2005, there were not a lot of garden blogs and the few that were out there were difficult to find.  I wanted to create a site where anyone interested in reading garden blogs would be able to find blogs on any topic related to gardening from anywhere in the world.  I deliberately reached out to bloggers outside of the US because I was interested in gardening outside of the US.  It took about a year, but I reached my goal of having blogs from every continent except Antarctica.  I’m still trying to reach my goal of blogs from every state. 

Initially, there were a lot of articles from the Home & Garden sections of regional publications that were great as fillers, but as the number of blogs increased, I dropped them and the site is now purely garden blogs.  I was also asked to blog on the page but I found it too difficult to maintain multiple blogs.  I gradually stopped blogging and commenting.  I really wanted the focus on the blogs themselves.

Caren White, editor of Garden Voices, also operates A Gardening Year, works another job and volunteers at Rutgers Gardens, where she’s pictured here
Photo: Mary Anne MacMillan

HFP: How did you come to be involved in it? And how do you maintain the site?

CW: Josh contacted me initially in November 2005 about adding my blog to the page.  Then he asked me if I would be willing to be the editor.  I did a post about my initial involvement. 

His original estimate of 1 to 2 hours a day to update the page was right on the money.  I was expected to update once a day, Monday through Friday.  I’m an overachiever, so I try to update twice a day, seven days a week.  Each update takes about an hour.  I check the feed to see all the new posts, skim them for content, “snip” them, tag them and then publish them through Movable Type software.  All of this was set up and is maintained by iVillage/GardenWeb.  I have no control over anything except the blog contents.

What took up a lot of my time initially was hunting for blogs to add.  I would spend 2 to 3 additional hours a day surfing the web, reading blogs and emailing bloggers asking if they would like to add their blogs.  Two things I asked for to help bloggers find me, was an “Add Your Blog” link on Garden Voices and a button for bloggers to add to their blogs.  They did add the link to the sidebar, but when the email addresses changed after NBC bought iVillage last year, the address on the link was never updated.  Development of a button for bloggers to use on their blogs was started, but never finished.

I’ve stopped recruiting blogs for the page due to space limitations.  The template is frozen at 40 entries.  There are already too many blogs to be able to fit everyone’s posts every day.  I requested an increase from 40 entries but was told that Garden Voices is not a blogroll.  Instead, I should choose “the best” posts of the day and publish those.  I’m not comfortable judging other people’s blogs so instead I publish the first 40 posts in my reader.  Occasionally I get complaints from bloggers that their posts are not appearing.  I always explain why and then make an effort to ensure that their posts get in more regularly.

Despite the fact that the “Add Your Blog” link no longer works, bloggers are still finding me.  They either leave comments on my garden blog or email me.  Here’s a hint to bloggers who want to get on sites like Garden Voices:  have an email address on your blog.  It’s so much easier for someone like me looking to add blogs to a site to be able to email a blogger directly rather than leaving a comment on a post.  If you are concerned about privacy issues, do what I did and have a separate email address for your blog.

I’d also like to do a shout out to Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening who gives out my email address to bloggers who want to add their blogs to Garden Voices.  Thanks to her, I’ve been able to add some really awesome blogs to the site.

HFP: Have any garden bloggers asked to be removed from the site?

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