The gardening, landscaping, and plant care guides that you will find at The Garden Helper were written in response to my realization that the number of people who have never grown a plant in their lives was shocking (to me at least...).
I grew up in the Pacific Northwet and began gardening by helping my mother in her gardens when I was four years old. I was in charge of collecting the worms and dealing with all the icky slimey things!
Flower and vegetable gardens were a standard part of the lifestyle throughout the area. Every home had a few (dozen?) house plants as well. I grew up assuming that was just the way of the world... something that everyone did, everywhere.
When I eventually grew up (a little) and discovered the internet and the BBS, I decided that I needed to build a chat room thingy so.... uhh... maybe... uhh...I could meet some sweet young thing (IF you must know!) I never did meet many girls but I soon realized how many people had never felt the joy, or the feeling of accomplishment that comes when your garden bursts into bloom in the spring.
Once the members from the chat room discovered my secret identity of 'The Plant Guy' I became deluged with plant and garden. I saved the e-mails and their answers in case I was ever asked the same question again. These e-mails eventually became the first of thousands of pages I've authored to let people know that there is no such thing as a 'brown thumb'.
These gardening guides are based on my personal experiences, successes, and failures as I've dug into the dirt for over a half century as a child... as a professional landscraper and a nurseryman. Now I'm just a happy old Gnome who loves playing in the gardens... Now, any reasonable person might rightly ask why I am telling you all of this? I don't have the foggiest idea! What does all this have to do with Plant Groups??? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I thought you asked me about something and... well, I just got to babbling and forgot what the heck I was doing for a minute, but I might be able to re-use some of it for my biography. (In case they decide to make a movie about me someday...)
OK... I see that I have wasted all my text space now so I can't tell you about Time Magazine.....
Anyway... I have tried to create a variety of different directories based on the different ways that I think that you may go looking to find your desired information. Eventually I will get directories set up for bloom sequence, colors etc.
This set of Garden Helper pages is categorized by common groups such as perennials, annuals, bulbous plants, grasses etc. There is a lot of information covered here and in each of the other directories. Enough stuff to keep you reading and learning for a long, long time... a couple years at least! <--------< The links to the different plant groups are all over there. If you run out of things to learn here, poke any old Gnome you see and they'll make sure you find me or someplace else to explore!
