Anyone know if we are having a raffle for March this year?

HI Sandra,

We are not having a March raffle.
In fact, raffles for the year have not yet been determined.

Oh my. Not a deal for me, but lots of folks seem to really thrive on raffle mania!

😥😥😥😥😥😥

Is it just me or is this site winding down?

No way, Lauri! They're just super busy but I'm sure the raffles will be coming soon.

I found the phrase 'not yet determined' a bit iffy for future raffles. Perhaps I misconstrued it.

Lauri, what do you mean by "this site is winding down"?

There are some forums that have lower activity, but there are others on here that are super busy. I guess it depends on what one's you are on.

I am really not concerned with the raffles. They are nice, but it's not what I came here for. I entered a couple just for fun though. But most of the raffle prizes didn't interest me anyways.

Things are always slower on the weekends, and weather has been unusual all over the world this year, so I think everyone is in wait and see mode, except the house plants crowd. We're all between summer and winter, depending on hemisphere too. Things will pick up again soon.

How will folks spend their acorns ?

Perhaps there is a natural lull. I've noticed a definite lack of posts and smaller community in the forums. To be fair, I don't participate in the species specific forums, and maybe that is where folks are migrating. I do note we've lost a fair number of 'regulars' from the site entirely - not sure where they might have gone.

Maybe just the winter 'blahs'. It just doesn't seem as dynamic as it used to be. Less instead of more.

Definitely not winding down. In fact we have a gigantic amount of initiatives we are starting up soon.

We haven't announced it yet but NGA has reacquired the GardenResearch.com division and we are busy reincorporating that into our core mission. NGA has done research as its core mission for 40 years and we're excited to have that work being brought back under our umbrella.

We also have a large number of programming projects scheduled for Garden.org.

The raffles take a huge amount of time to conduct. We'll have contests that let people spend acorns, but it won't be every single month this year.

Thanks for responding Dave. Always nice to know what's going on.

To anyone interested, here is the link to the Garden Research. https://gardenresearch.com/

So Dave, it looks like this is all market research, and not any kind of actual garden research. Is that the new focus?

lauribob said:it looks like this is all market research, and not any kind of actual garden research.

I think if, like me, you only read the About Us section it kinda gives that impression.

BTW, I later thought I'd give it a try for the new contest. Just to look. Since one of the categories was diseases, and since I'm always paranoid about oak wilt disease, I typed 'oak wilt' (without the quotation marks) in the search field. It came back with an error msg that searches need to only use one word. That's fine. Just letting people know so they can avoid my mistake.

lauribob said:To anyone interested, here is the link to the Garden Research. https://gardenresearch.com/

So Dave, it looks like this is all market research, and not any kind of actual garden research. Is that the new focus?

Looks that way to me, too.

I had a look to this link lauribob provided. https://gardenresearch.com/ It took me to a page for National Gardening Survey 2018 Edition for $ $1,295.00. Is this the data that members contribute here for sale?

https://gardenresearch.com/abo...
Garden Research, a division of the National Gardening Association, is a well-known and widely recognized authority on the U.S. consumer lawn and garden market.

Since 1973, we have worked with the Gallup Organization, Harris Interactive, and now Research Now/SSI to provide market research information for the lawn, garden, and nursery industries.

Our market research reports and research services have helped companies identify and define marketing opportunities. Our reports and services also help companies improve their advertising, sales presentations, brand awareness, positioning, product development, strategic planning, customer satisfaction, investor relations, mail order catalogs, websites, and more.

https://gardenresearch.com/nat...

Here are just some of the issues addressed in this timely report:
•Who are the consumers for your products in terms of age, education, occupation, income and other demographics?

Has this site been mining this information data on me? My income? My education? My other demographics?