@dave
Could you please define that section? Is it a section for garden landscape photos, as in photos that show garden designs, flower beds, and the like? Or is it for photos that show landscapes in general, as in mountains, lakes, oceans?

When I was a new member, I noticed a lovely ocean view in that section. I happened to have just taken a similar photo so I uploaded it. The following day, a helpful and kind NGA member emailed me to let me know that I had posted the photo to the wrong section so I deleted it. Since then, I've noticed that some members would upload not only general landscapes (mountains, etc.) but also shots of blooms, tops of trees, leaves, houses, even family photos. Today there is only one true garden landscape photo there.

If the new landscape photos section is for sharing garden landscape ideas, then maybe it could be renamed to reflect that?

Edited to add: I think that, in general, garden landscaping is very challenging for gardeners so having a photo section where we can readily see how other gardeners group plants would be very helpful.

You will find several other threads on this subject, with many of the same sentiments, and the bottom line seems to be that the landscape photos section is for whatever people want it to be. Individual plant pictures belong in the database, but anything else goes in the landscape section, pretty much. The original idea seems to have been displaying more than one plant in combination or in gardens, and labeling them with boxes. I personally do not give thumbs up for anything other than that specific combination.

I am one of the people frustrated by this feature. It began, as Baja says, as a tool to tag plants for others to see how they have been used in garden settings. Done properly, if a person is researching a specific plant, he or she could not only see various photographs of blooms, leaves, whole plant, etc., but also photographs showing the plant combined with others in a landscape setting. With no clear direction, however, this feature has evolved into a free-for-all - seascapes, clouds, mountains, some actual plant combinations, some tagged, others not. I don't have a feel for what the owners might have in mind for this feature. Perhaps one will chime in.

At one time, that section was called "Multi-plant Photos", a place to upload garden photos showing one or multiple plants that the member would tag with each plant name so that it could appear in the database. When the name changed to "Landscape Photos", many members began uploading all sorts of pretty landscape scenery and sunrises, sunsets, etc. rather than concentrating on garden scenes with multiple plants. I think the database moderators go through them on occasion and try to get the member to identify any plants in the picture so that the photo can then be linked to the plants in the database.

Which is just busy-work for the moderators. Sigh.

I would love to see them go ahead and leave the Landscape Photos for just pretty pictures of whatever. People enjoy posting their many lovely photos of pretty scenery, and I've seen some really nice shots.

I do wish we could also have a plant combinations feature, which is what the landscape thing started out as. It's really useful, but unfortunately, the owners have no interest in reviving that feature. I do appreciate it when actual landscape pictures, featuring plants, turn up in the database because they were tagged. Apparently the tagging is an unfixable problem with mobile devices, so that would have required some work-around to make it so everyone could connect their photos to the database. It's so nice to see how plants can be incorporated into one's garden in different combinations for different effects.

I do think it's a little silly to award acorns to landscape photos, seeing what it has morphed into. I don't really care about the nuts, but some of the pictures that end up getting posted during raffle time, just to get a nut...

lauribob said:I don't really care about the nuts, but some of the pictures that end up getting posted during raffle time, just to get a nut...

Raffle time?

@_Bleu_

Monthly "Not-A-Raffle-Raffles are held usually from March to October each year. We have generous vendor companies who sponsor the raffles each month, offering great prizes from their stores! We use the acorns we've earned to purchase tickets (5 acorns per ticket) and the computer randomly draws the winners. Once the winners have been selected, admin posts a video of the drawing and then contacts each winner (in order) to tell them what prizes are still available. If you are a winner, you send your name, address to Dave and he gives it to the vendor. It's really lots of fun; I've won at least three times over the years and received some great plants in the mail at no cost to me and the vendors even cover shipping charges! It's a great incentive for adding information, etc. to the database to earn acorns to stash away for the raffles!

Here's more of an explanation that I copied from one of the raffle pages:

"Here we go again with another Not-a-Raffle Raffle. Why is this not a regular raffle? Well, in a regular raffle, you pay for the tickets with money. But in NGA raffles, you buy your tickets with acorns. Tickets cost 5 acorns each.

Important note: these prizes are all only available to members in the United States. I'm really sorry for those in other countries, but the complications and expense of shipping things to other countries is just too difficult and costly to arrange with the various companies. For this reason, we have made the decision to limit the contest to United States winners only. If you are outside the US, you can still participate, but if you win you will need to gift the prize to another member of your choice."

You can check out past monthly raffles and see the video drawings here: https://garden.org/ideas/raffl...

Back to landscapes...I love landscape photos, but this is a gardening site, not a photography site. Landscape photos here should be about plants whether gardens or wild, and should have at least some of the plants tagged.

@plantladylin, that was a great post. Very informative.

I usually do not participate in that sort of thing because it often means that, once the businesses who give merchandise away get one's mailing address, they keep mailing fliers for a very long time. I guess you can't have the cake and eat it too.

@ctcarol, thanks to the actual garden landscape photos people upload, I discovered plant combinations I never thought of. It is also so very helpful to see how plants look growing together in established gardens.

@_Bleu_, that may be the case with other groups and sites, but it doesn't happen here. I've won 3 times and have never been contacted by the vendors at all after I got my prize plants. I'm sure Dave is very careful about things like that. If it happened, that vendor probably wouldn't be around long. You're totally safe to to enter and win.

@plantmanager, so very glad to hear that!

Sending you some acorns so you can get a ticket when the NARR starts in March.

@plantmanager, I will, I promise.

lauribob said:I would love to see them go ahead and leave the Landscape Photos for just pretty pictures of whatever. People enjoy posting their many lovely photos of pretty scenery, and I've seen some really nice shots.

...

I do think it's a little silly to award acorns to landscape photos, seeing what it has morphed into. I don't really care about the nuts, but some of the pictures that end up getting posted during raffle time, just to get a nut...

I totally agree with the nut issue. Here's my curiosity - why are no nuts given for adding a new plant to the database? That seems much more valuable to me than a pretty picture. Any why 5 nuts for an event? I get that it is a bit time consuming to get all the info entered, but I just added several events from the same nursery, utilizing the clone feature, and felt a bit guilty with the sudden wealth of nuts. I mostly just give them away, so no harm. It just got me wondering.

Deb, acorns are given for adding new plants to the database.
https://garden.org/special/aco...

Bonehead said:I totally agree with the nut issue. Here's my curiosity - why are no nuts given for adding a new plant to the database? That seems much more valuable to me than a pretty picture. Any why 5 nuts for an event? I get that it is a bit time consuming to get all the info entered, but I just added several events from the same nursery, utilizing the clone feature, and felt a bit guilty with the sudden wealth of nuts. I mostly just give them away, so no harm. It just got me wondering.

Just a guess, but I assume the acorns for adding events is an incentive to use the feature.

No acorns are giving for adding a plant to a database, only posting photos or adding data to it. If you propose a data update and add a few different photos (i.e. bloom, foliage, entire plant, etc.) then the acorns start to add up.

I also like the occasional 'photo drive' when acorns are given for specific photo gallery contributions to encourage folks to branch out a bit from bloom portraits. Seems we had one for fall color, winter interest, and I think emerging growth. All were set up for a shortish period of time, and it seemed to me that they were successful (i.e., we got a good number of photos for the given gallery).

Here's a thought. I just noticed that you get a nut for a (useful) comment posted to the database. Maybe the same standard should apply to the landscape photos? Go ahead and post your seascapes and mountains, but you will only get a nut for a garden photo. Maybe give double nuts if it's tagged.