RATIONALE: rec.gardens.ecosystems

Organic Gardening, the magazine, conducted a survey in 1995 showing that the number of home gardeners just in the U.S. had grown to a total of 78 million. A little over one third of those home gardenrs used mostly organic gardening techniques, a little over one third used mostly non-organic techniques, and the remaining one third used mostly a combination of organic and non-organic techniques. The trend is towards increased participation in organic gardening especially with starting home gardeners. There is no existing newsgroup clearly focused on organic gardening or organic techniques.

Successful organic gardening is more demanding than non-organic gardening because it requires a working knowledge of the ways the total natural community inter-relates with the physical and chemical enviroment of the home garden. Rec.gardens.ecosystems is being proposed as a newsgroup with an extensive FAQ dealing with the many issues of organic gardening and the ways these issues inter-relate with the ecosystems of the garden and the larger community.

The resources are in place for:

  1. Rec.gardens.ecosystems to have its own website;
  2. to have the on-topic articles archived and made available through WWW; and
  3. to have the group FAQ available via WWW and FTP.

Rec.gardens.ecosystems would also employ a robot moderator backed by human moderators to minimize problems with cross-posting and to help keep the discussions focused. The proposed newsgroup has the potential to be an important resource for many home gardeners.