There are only two colors which occupy most of the earth..guess? I am sure most of you know the answer of this simple question, yes, that is green and blue. Green is the color of nature, healing and prosperity. Some color experts even says that if you are confused and don’t get any color to use, use green. If you are located in Indian Subcontinent then you must have experienced the rainy season after the summer, how green and fresh the belt of mountains look like? A touch of life, a freshness and a fragrance which you will not found even in your 1000$ French perfume. Well, I know one lady from United States who loves green color, though she never told me but I come to know when I saw her love and dedication for her online community Gardens and Gardening.

When any topic comes related to gardens and gardening, she can talk non-stop and long beyond your imagination. Lynn Worrell has successfully completed her 50 years on this earth and I wish another 50 years for her. There are many reasons for this blessing but one main reason is that Lynn is one among many other nature lovers who provided and helped not only many people but also nature itself to flourish and grow, when today most of us are killing our own life support i.e. nature. She is responsible for uniting some more than 6000 gardening enthusiasts from different parts of the world to share their tips, tricks, success and even their failures under one community i.e. Gardens and Gardening.

The community was started by someone in early days of Orkut, Lynn joined the community as a member because of her interest and love for the subject and soon became quiet active, that time the owner who was not very active decided to give the ownership of the community to Lynn and from here the saga of one of the most beautiful community on orkut has started heading by Lynn Worrell. Though the community was not so active when Lynn took it over, lots of unanswered and unsolved queries and doubts were the main part of forums, this was like a challenge in front of Lynn. She intended to answer as many of the questions which were unseen or unanswered by searching through internet and providing links of the best online resource she could find.

The community is now with the contribution and co-ordination of all members including Lynn and it has now became a library for gardening or in better words a user generated content base on only one subject, gardening. Gardens and Gardening Community on orkut includes the members from educated students and experts to entrepreneurs getting started with their flower farms, landscaping and nursery businesses who participate in discussions and share their vast knowledge on the subject. Not only this but it also includes a particular thread where the members can even share and trade seeds with each other.

The credibility and outstanding attempt of this community could be well proved by the community members themselves where they started a thread of thanks giving to Lynn and one particular comment catches my eyes which I want to add here, it was one of the community member who left orkut, and return back just for this community, he said “if I have come back to orkut its only because I want to be a part of this community and take advantage of this knowledge resource. This community has done wonders for me. I left orkut [deleted my profile] several times from orkut but came back only tempted by this community but this time I am staying for good.” I must say that it was a wise decision made by this gardener. In my conversation with Lynn on this community by an email I found one best answer by Lynn when I asked her :

There are many other communities with the same nature on orkut, what’s the reason that this community is the most active and contributing?

Lynn answered convincingly:

I think it has to do with the amount of time and effort I put into the community. I am member and moderator of several other gardening communities but the owners are not very active. I focus all my energy and effort on the one community and it has helped in increasing members and the participation. To keep it fresh I change the community photo once a week and try to introduce a new plant each time. Along with the photo I start a topic about the plant so others can learn about it too. Rarely does a question goes unanswered more than 48 hours.

To encourage others to participate in answering the questions, I intentionally do not answer the questions that are scrapped to me. I ask people to post their questions in the community so that everyone can contribute and learn from the pooled knowledge and experience. This gardening community is not about any one individual and me . It is a cooperative of people all sharing their questions, knowledge and experience with each other. It is a successful and active community because of the sum of all its parts.

The thing that made the major difference in the community was converting it to a moderated one with zero tolerance for spam. This prevented all the spam bots from polluting the community with ads and people welcome the change. All people are approved for membership, but as soon as anyone post anything off topic or spam related, they are banned from the community.

I noticed the members from Indian subcontinent regions had a keen interest in gardening and lack of resources. So I started searching for information useful for them locally. This helped attract even more members from the area because, as I have learned, the nursery providers do not label their plants and provide information to their customers for growing plants. This leaves the gardeners to fend for themselves with trial and error. It is something I do not understand, it makes no sense for a nursery to intentionally set up their customer for failure by not providing plant information to them. I have been encouraging the gardening entrepreneurs in the community to provide this added value of knowledge to their customers as a way to grow their own business. There are climate zones that the subcontinents and the United States have in common so we made an effort to figure out what plants and techniques work well for both regions. This gives the people of subcontinent access to a wide range of gardening advice not yet available to them locally.

If the above answer of Lynn which I found the best answer for her passion and never ending love for gardening did not satisfied you than you should see the variety of interesting and useful topics on the forum from video library of “how to do” by community members, Botany 101- learn the basics of what makes plants grow, landscape designing, everything gardening, best bulb and warm climates, hot to read fertilizers label and many other resourceful topics like planning, maintaining, seeds, fertilizer and so on.

The community is not very unique or uncommon title. But it is one of the best and most unique, friendly and strong community of garden enthusiasts. The community has winningly accomplished its objective, and the proof for it is the community itself. Go! Try it out!

Author’s Request: We constantly look forward for the orkut communities which are unique in concept and are performing exceptionally well. If you come across any such orkut communities or you are a member or an owner of such communities, please contact us and we will be glad to make your community featured on our community showcase.

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