A Gardening.SE showcase

Question

For the sake of inspiration and admiration (and eventually new plantation), might it be an idea to set up a showcase of gardening?

There is absolutely no doubt that some (if not most) members of this community have astonishingly beautiful flourishing gardens, that others have perfectly balanced vegetable gardens that provide a varied and complete diet throughout the year, and that there are numerous great ideas that many of you came up with and put into practice. This community is full of potential inspiration, and I think it would be great to let that out by setting up a kind of exhibition or gallery.

Where should such a thing be posted? There are things as Community Wiki, Meta and normal questions, and I have seen things as community polls on other corners of StackExchange.

Answer 1

While I have no doubt that many of our members have wonderfully beautiful gardens, the main site is for questions and answers about gardens and landscapes, not a place for beauty contests. Community Wiki is not a band-aid for off topic questions.

I'm also opposed to using meta in this manner it should not be used as a home for things that would off topic on the main site.

However, I would be amenable to helping set up a site blog if folks wanted to show off their gardens that way. Provided there is interest.

Answer 2

You could utilize the header to add an image of select gardens similar to how photo.stackexchange.com does it. We hold a weekly contest and the moderators add it to the header as the contest winners are selected in meta. Doing it monthly or quarterly might make sense depending on interest.

Answer 3

I think there would have to be a purpose other than putting up some pictures. The garden should be annotated with text that shows why it works well. A very short list of topics that would be relevant to understand why it's a good garden would include:

• design goals (pesticide free, xericulture, etc)
• timing (when do seedlings go out, when is cleanup)
• yearly practices

Answer 4

I like the header idea, copying what the photography stack exchange are doing. Providing a piece of factual iformation is surely a good way to promote engaged use of the site. It ties in well to the question - whats the best way to promote more high rep users

Since a substantial fraction of questions regard plant identification, rather than showcasing individuals gardens a better approach would be a regular plant ident. Every week the moderators put up a new species to share different species. It's similar in purpose to the blog plant of the day - http://jillraggett.tumblr.com/