Web site aids with gardening decisions

Tired of growing the same old azaleas and Bradford pears? Gardeners looking for something different can check out hundreds of suitable plants on a free Web site created by horticulturists at NC State University.

The site is located at www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/pages.html. It offers photos and information on plants that grow well in USDA zones 6, 7 and 8 — zones that include much of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, and parts of the West and Southern Plains.

“There are so many wonderful options open to gardeners in these zones,” says site coordinator Erv Evans, consumer horticulture specialist with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service at NC State. “Our goal is to get people to consider new and underutilized plants.”

The site is organized into “online booklets” that help users quickly and easily find plants to meet their needs. “Urban Tree Identification” has more than 80 trees in its index, while “Perennials” has information on more than 160 flowers. Smaller “booklets,” accessible through internal links, offer information on topics such as ornamental grasses and vegetable and herb gardening. Additional booklets on the wildflowers of North Carolina and summer-flowering bulbs are under review.

Entries can be searched by common or botanical names, and each includes the information you’ll need to grow the plant. To get a good look at the plant, click on the thumbnail image and a full-screen color photo will appear.

In addition to searching for new plants, gardeners can use the site to identify plants they’ve seen in other yards, or check on the care requirements of plants they’re having problems with. There’s even a site about plants they may not want to grow. “The Poisonous Plants of North Carolina” lists information on 344 poisonous plants found in the region. You can search the site by plant name or plant part — a function that can, literally, be a lifesaver if you don’t know the name of the plant someone has just eaten, but you know what the berry or leaf looked like.

External links, arranged in categories for easy searching, lead users to pages for the JC Raulston Arboretum, the extension service’s Master Gardener program, and more than 2,000 other gardening-related sites. “It’s fun going through the sites, but make sure you don’t have anything else to do,” Evans says. “You won’t want to leave.”