These are some of the things we often have to correct in data proposals:

Please spell out inches and feet instead of using abbreviations or single and double quotes in the "Plant Height" and "Plant Spread" fields.

If a plant has hardiness information, it's not an annual.

If a plant is an annual, there's no need to check the "Suitable as Annual" box. All annuals are suitable as annuals. That checkbox is for perennials that can be grown as annuals.

Please avoid checking off the "Suitable in 1 gallon" box in the "Containers" section unless the plant stays small forever.

Errors are common in the "Flower Color" section. If a plant produces blue blooms, for instance, check the "Blue" box instead of checking "Other" and typing "powder blue," "slate blue," "dark blue," and other variations. If the bloom is blue with a white edge, check "Bi-Color" and type "blue and white" instead of checking both the "Blue" and "White" boxes.

I hope the other mods and admins will join me in offering suggestions in this thread.

and learning.

Thank you Zuzu.

I've been guilty of the inches and feet, sorry, didn't know. Helpful clarification on the bloom color. Great information - hope the other admins chime in. I typically use my hard copy Western Garden Book for a source, what links provide reliable information?

Great information, Zuzu, and helpful to everyone.

Western Garden Book is a great source of information. I get a lot of information from Learn2Grow -- http://www.learn2grow.com/plan... ; Monrovia -- http://www.monrovia.com/plant-... ; and Proven Winners -- https://www.provenwinners.com/... (Okay, I admit I go to the Proven Winners site mainly to look at the pictures).

When you're composing a data proposal, it's good to put yourself in the position of someone who'll be searching for plants with specific characteristics. A person searching for plants with white blooms for a moon garden, for instance, will not want the results to include red, blue, and purple flowers with just a touch of white. A person searching for plants that grow to 3 feet tall can confine the searches to 3 feet and 36 inches and will not have to also look for 3 ft, 3', 36 in, and 36". I personally like red blooms, but I like the red to be complemented by another color rather than being solid red, so I can type "red" into the Bi-Color field and the "Multi-Color" field and find lots of the blooms I like.

I should clarify that my last sentence should have read that I can search for red in the Bi-Color field and then search for red in the Multi-Color field. A search for both at once would be likely to have no results because it would search for plants with red in both fields.

A good thing to know.

I am sure I have made mistakes on the very few that I have entered. Thanks for the clarifications!

This is great. I'm going to star the thread. After it's up for a few weeks, if you don't want to turn it into a Tip or Idea yourself, I'll propose a draft and try for "concise" ... then ask for corrections and shortening advice.

I wish the plant height and plant width fields could be sliders so we could search for "30-40 inches" and catch them all. But then we couldn't enter things like "3 to 5 feet".

Yes, there's a lack of consistency there (and some are noted "3 feet to 5 feet," which could compound the search problems).

I have no plans to turn it into a tip, so you can go ahead and run with it. I might start another thread on common errors in new plant proposals, however.

Zuzu

Thanks for your info and all your help all the time!

Is there any way this could be made into some kind of "pop-up" when a person is making a data proposal?

Unfortunately, instructions of that kind rarely work. The words "Plant height" and "Plant spread" on the data proposal form, for example, are already underlined, and if you hover over the words, you get a message: (Write "inches" instead of using quotes). It hasn't worked so far.

In all fairness, I DID see the "write 'inches'" etc. thing!
Probably missed a lot of more important stuff, but still...

I've just recently learned that the underlining means more information if you hover. I previously just thought it was...who knows what. Not sure where clarification could be made, but that might be a thought.

Sandy, I didn't mean that no one had ever read it. Sorry.

Here's the sad truth, Deb: No matter how many requests and explanations are posted, some people simply ignore them. Look at the New Plant Proposal Page:

http://garden.org/plants/propo...

There's a message at the top, marked "Important" and rendered in green, but many people still add quotes to the cultivar names.

The trade name and series lines have asterisks corresponding to another message at the bottom of the page, but many people still use the Trade Name line for the cultivar name.

I guess all you can do is try. Sorry for the extra work this likely causes you.

"Sandy, I didn't mean that no one had ever read it. Sorry. Big Grin "

LOL, Zuzu -- and I didn't mean to imply that that's what you meant...

I so admire your patience with us all...