Not very useful information for you, but: I participate in three Swedish forums, two general gardening forums but with rose sections, and the Swedish Rose Society Forum. Sweden is a small country so I've met many participants in these forums in real life. I used to frequent the Peter Beales forum but not so much now. I check a German forum quite often, forumplanten.de although my German is not so good as it was. I feel at home there because the roses discussed are very often varieties I grow myself, especially the old roses and species roses. I still miss the old Usenet forum, rec.gardens.roses, the first forum I discovered in 1995 when the web was fairly new. I keep in touch regularly with one former member in Stockholm and we've met IRL about twice a year for the last 18 years. He's a very good source of unusual plants! I try to reciprocate but I don't have too many rarities. There are two absolutely essential sites for Swedish gardeners, Virtuella floran, with all native plants, their habit, spread, etc, and their names in English, German and all Scandinavian languages, very useful for me. The other is SKUD a plant database of every garden plant sold in Sweden, now or formerly. They update all taxonomic information regularly. A godsend when taxonomists are working so hard to change plant names. I also use some specialist databases, Hirsutum for rhododendrons and Clematis on the Web at the U of Hull, and HMF, of course.

I went looking for some info on Hostas, and now I can say I am a hostaholic. From there I discovered the Winter Sowing forum and also discovered that I have a very addictive personality. Now lets see, I go to the pond forum, annuals, Canadian forum ect. ect. ect. I really need help. lol Hubby doesn't know what to do, know I have bags of potting soil stashed in the basement, containers coming out the wazoo, Hostas that I don't have room to plant, seeds drying all over the house, plans for a pond next year and a new garden bed that I'll be starting any day. He just shakes his head. I really hope I get this second job I applied for. Brenda

The problem is nobody has to spend their money with you, attracting the favor of their custom might be impacted adversely. Ornamental plants is a frivolous expenditure. With taxes, insurance and other obligations seeming unavoidable shoppers aren't likely to appreciate encountering an attitude from nurseries. There are methods being used to identify those who bounce checks etc. When you open for business you have to deal with everybody who pops up and what they might be about, that's just the way it is. The alternative is you are mostly ignored and go out of business - a common experience. A big part of it is a lack of general interest in specialty or unfamiliar goods, for instance I drive by a small Greek "bistro" and a pizza joint next to each other as part of my regular travels. Saturday night the parking lot at the pizza place was bursting, next door there was not one car. Especially if you want to appeal to a niche market you have to shout you are there and may have to bend over backwards to serve those who do respond, rather than try to attach red flags to some of them.

I went to a couple of others and found the typical internet "expert-sycophant" relationships, so I didn't stay. I do think there is information to be had in those other sites, but you have to put up with a lot of crap to get to it. Just like you do over most of the internet these days. chuckiebtoo's comments - in general - express my personal perspective on 'wandering'. (I don't have the same level of "appreciation" of worms that he does. :) ) I have only so much time to spend on the internet, and I have become much more judicious about where I spend that time. I spend my time where I "like" to "be". I also "second" betsy's comments. I keep an eye on the "hot topics" and if one piques my interest, I'll have a look. Paul