For 2015, Let's Celebrate Gardening at All Things Plants

For every measurement I can find, All Things Plants has become the largest gardening website online. Our database of plants is unsurpassed anywhere, and in any given week our members post more content here than anywhere else. Spanning the forums, the database, articles, blogs, plant lists and elsewhere, thousands of photos are shared each week. Members teach each other new techniques. New gardeners learn solutions to their problems and end up with better, healthier and more beautiful gardens. Beginner photographers learn advanced techniques to improve their photos. For every niche of gardening that exists, we have a corner of ATP that gives people a place to spread their wings and delve as far in as they want.

For years past, we had special "plant weeks" where we dedicated an entire week to a specific kind of plant, and then we encouraged articles about these plants. That has been a highly successful idea and generated hundreds of excellent articles and thousands of discussion posts where members shared what they knew and thanked each other for sharing.

For 2015, we're expanding on this idea with what we're calling "Celebrating Gardening" - every other week this year will be devoted to a specific area of gardening. Most of those weeks will be devoted to our favorite plants like daylilies, irises, roses, etc, and some of the weeks will cover tools, winter interest, mail order gardening, etc.

In the past, the plant weeks fell at random times in the year, but this year we will be celebrating each plant type while it's peaking in our gardens. So daylilies week will be in July. Salvias week in September. Rhododendron week in April. You get the idea. This is because we want the Celebration Weeks to be highly interactive. It won't be so much a time to read and learn, but a time to share. We'll want people to post pictures from their gardens that week. Talk about what's blooming and why you love them.

Each Celebration Week will follow the same basic format:

1) We will open each week with an article summarizing the best articles posted to the site during the past years, along with a list of the most popular cultivars of that plant.

2) We will host a photo contest for each plant week! That means you will have the chance to compete numerous times throughout the year, and will enjoy judging a contest every other week. The contests will be smaller than a typical annual contest, so the judging will be quick and easy. At the end of the year, the first place winners of each week's contest will be pitted against each other in one final 2015 Best of the Year judging, which will include huge prizes.

3) We will also be adding extra portals into the database during these weeks. For example, during daylilies week, all the content posted to the daylilies section of the database will be given extra prominence around the ATP website. Conversations centered around these photos will be featured in extra visible areas.

4) For many of the weeks (but not all) we will host mini-contests, where we award prizes for certain things like "most thumbed images in that plant's database this week" and stuff like that. It's all about having fun.

The whole idea here is to get people talking about their plants, and everything we do will be centered around that. When your favorite plant's week comes along, you'll have a blast and won't want to leave your computer all week long.

You can see our entire calender for the year at this page.

This first week in January is dedicated to Celebrating All Things Plants (the website). Every day this week you'll learn about the various features of the site, and have a chance to share how YOU use the site, and what your favorite parts are. Starting tomorrow, we will begin a membership drive where we'll give you a special place where you can refer your other gardening friends to ATP. If they signup using your referral link, you will get 10 acorns!

We are certain 2015 is going to be a great year, both in our gardens and online at ATP. We're grateful you are all here to share it with us, and we look forward to spending the year with you all.