In the vast majority of cases a person will be happier if he has no rigid and arbitrary notions, for gardens are moodish, particularly with the novice. If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy; and if the plants that thrive chance not to be the ones that he planted, they are plants nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them.

L.H. Bailey, 1910
Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) from Project Gutenberg.

Remember when the web was lynx, mosaic, gopher and veronica? When there was no spam, and newsgroups were useful, and blogs weren't even a glimmer in the eye of their inventor? Henriette's Herbal Homepage was there and flourishing, back in the internet stoneage. Widely regarded as the definitive web resource for all things herbal, it's non-commercial, chock-full of information, searchable and cross-indexed, with herbal FAQs, herbal archives, old herbal texts, and thousands of photos. It's one of the best places to go on the Web if you're interested in herbs and their uses.

Actively working at ground level on many international and domestic projects, the Permaculture Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to promotion and support of the sustainability of human culture and settlements. Their work is based on the permaculture design system for creating sustainable human environments in balance and harmony with nature. Permaculture is based on three ethical principles: Care of the Earth; Care of People; and Reinvesting the Surplus toward the former two.

The intent of the Plant Information Center (PIC) is to connect the research community and the general public (including school children) so that primary research materials owned by the University of North Carolina (UNC) in the United States can be made available to new audiences. PIC is driven by the desire to nurture the interest and enthusiasm of these audiences in the study of trees, plants, and natural history. This vision is realized through sharing the resources of the UNC Herbarium in a virtual way over the Internet. The UNC Herbarium, founded in 1908, includes over 600,000 labeled museum specimens of plants, algae, fungi, and fossils. It is the largest collection in the southeastern United States and specializes in the collection of plants of this region.

EcoAccess helps you make informed environmental decisions by providing access to practical and objective information. You can help collect, organize, compare, verify and publish useful environmental knowledge. If you care about the future, learning what's happening to the environment is a great way to invest your volunteer time. Starting in the United States, and the state of North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, we are building a model for environmental education, volunteer involvement, and information delivery that can be replicated in other communities across North Carolina and around the world.

The Agricultural Resources Center (ARC) and Pesticide Education Project (PESTed) is a non-profit organization working in North Carolina since 1986 to minimize human and environmental exposure to toxic pesticides. They watchdog public officials in the state of North Carolina and work to improve public policy, as well as to educate individuals and institutions about alternatives to toxics. They are a small grassroots organization with a focus on common-sense alternatives to harmful pesticides.

Rec.gardens.ecosystems is a Usenet newsgroup intended for the discussion of gardening topics from an ecological perspective. Gardening based on these insights requires knowledge about soil, compost, plant nutrition, gardening practices, botany, the biology of pests, diseases, weeds and wildlife. Gardening from an ecological perspective incorporates organic gardening and Integrated Pest Management (IPM), but is not identical to either of them. What they have in common is that both can only be successful if based on a knowledge of how nature works.