Academics and Garden Writers Team up to Fight Misinformation

Garden Professors Blog Co-Founders

DATE: April 25, 2017

First came the Garden Professors Blog, where four plant scientists began confronting gardening myths and even conventional wisdom with scientific findings. In print, the professors authored award-winning, game-changing books with titles like The Truth about Organic Gardening and The Informed Gardener. A Garden Professors Facebook Group soon followed, where currently over 11,000 members fact-check the latest proclamations on plants, products and growing practices.

With learners increasingly turning to video, next came Good Gardening Videos.org, a campaign to aggregate accurate, reliable videos and steer gardeners away from the ones that are misleading or confusing. Founder Susan Harris explains, “Bad advice is everywhere – from self-appointed gurus, profit-hungry corporations and ardent ideologues, on top of the usual drek created by SEO-savvy content mills. Bad gardening advice leads to gardener failure and even environmental harm, so something had to be done about it.”

Garden Professor Blog co-founder Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott explains, “Gardeners often have a difficult time navigating the internet with its home remedies, worthless or harmful products, and just generally bad advice. What plant and soil scientists can provide is objective, credible and practical information to help gardeners make good choices. The Garden Professors emerged in 2009 as a vehicle to do just that.”

Further evidence of the pro-science movement came in early 2017 when the Garden Writers Association announced a new science-writing category for its book awards, open to Ph.D.s only.

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About Good Gardening Videos.org: Good Gardening Videos promotes hundreds of gardening videos chosen for accuracy and quality. The nonprofit is pro-science and pro-environment, and its website and Youtube channel are ad-free. It is a collaborative effort among horticulturists and garden communicators.

About the Garden Professors: The Garden Professors began in 2009 as a blog by four university professors with a passion for providing gardeners and landscape professionals with science-based information that’s current and relevant. Over the years it has expanded in numbers and scope, now offering an active Facebook page and group to help gardeners all over the world.

CONTACTS:

Susan Harris
Email: contact@goodgardeningvideos.org

Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott
Email: lindacs@wsu.edu

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