Gardening website shortlisted for Good Web Guide Awards

The Good Web Guide is about to announce the winner of its Website of the Year Award. The shortlist contains a fair number of sites to do with property and parenting (possibly reflecting the interests of judge Sarah Beeny, well-known for being pregnant in seemingly most episodes of the long-running TV show Property Ladder). However, there is one gardening site: Growveg.

So congratulations to Jeremy Dore, its founder, for getting this far. If you haven’t visited Growveg before, do go and have a look. One of the GWG awards is the People’s Choice, and Jeremy is hoping for a good turn-out on the voting front. If you’ve visited and liked it, you can add your vote to the growing pile.  Voting closes tomorrow.

Jeremy will soon be celebrating the third anniversary of his on-line Garden Planning Tool. Like all software, it takes getting used to, but when I tried it out before mentioning it in my Webwatch column in Kitchen Garden last January, I managed to create a plot layout in a very short time, even with my lumbering approach. A useful feature is the printable planting list which gives the number of plants for the space you’ve allotted, with details of planting distances.

I have to admit that planning in the garden is not my strong point. I forget how many lists I’ve begun and lost over the years. However, if you’re the tidy-minded type, this might be up your street. And its features are building up: this year Jeremy’s added square-foot planting, succession gardening and facilities for garden designers.

New garden plans can be created each year based on your previous year’s layout and the software remembers plans up to five years old, allowing optional crop rotation warnings on areas previously planted with a selected vegetable. Part of the package includes fortnightly emails which remind you when to plant and sow. If you’d like to try it out, Jeremy offers a free 30-day trial. 

Even if you don’t sign up, have a look at Jeremy’s Growveg blog. He shares the writing with American garden writer and expert, Barbara Pleasant, and posts usually contain a deal of helpful seasonal information.