Opening this disc takes you to a screen with five major sections and a toolbar running across the bottom. To start, you have the option of setting the program up for your specific climate zone. This will presort the plant database and bring up only plants that are likely to do well in your garden. No sense in getting excited about a plant you can't grow where you live anyway.
Let's start with the art of gardening, we'll get to the science a bit later. From the main screen click on Regional Garden Tours to get ideas from gardens that have worked well in different areas and climates. This is basically a narrated slide show of distinct styles of public gardens with information on the types of plants, how they have been combined, and the ideas behind the design of each garden. These tours can be helpful stimulators of creative ideas.
The next place you may want to visit is the Techniques and Advice section. This takes you to a detailed outline organized around general topics such as Garden Design, Lawns, Help for the New Gardener, and Container Gardening. Clicking any one of these will bring up subheadings of more detail and then give you photos and text that will walk you through the subject at hand.
The Media Garden, also available on the main screen, is a diagrammatic garden that teaches you about working with different types of plant materials. You can move the cursor around each scene and view animation and video segments concerning topics related to the plants you are pointing to. For example, move the cursor over a rose bush about to be planted and a menu of four choices concerning rose care pops up. Choose Practice Pruning a Hybrid Tea Rose, and you are faced with a rose bush that needs pruning in five different spots. If you choose one of these, Practice Making a Pruning Cut, you must chose among three options for the best spot above or below a budding branch to make your cut. Guess wrong, like I did, and a crow caws at you. When you pick the right cut a bird sings. From now on, I will remember to make my cuts 3/4 of an inch above the bud and will be expecting birds to sing when I do. This simple interactive method is surprisingly effective-much better than passively watching a demonstration video or reading about the procedure in a book.
Detail on specific plants is accessed from the Plant Encyclopedia. This is where much of the science is located. You can run the Plant Selector where criteria for the plants you want are sorted. Then jump to the Photo Browser to see pictures of your selections. Behind these pictures more detail is available in the Plant Descriptions section. Any one of these can be accessed by tabs on the left margin of the screen.
Plant Problems is a section that, like the plant encyclopedia, takes you to a tabbed workbook where you can search groups of photos of the problem you are looking for. This graphic and text database can be sorted by plant types (i.e., bulbs, vegetables, vines), region, or by problem type (i.e., insects, diseases, animals). Once a photo of the problem is found, clicking on the problem description tab gives you more information such as its causes and possible solutions.
A group of lists for your notes and bookmarks are always available on a pop-up Features button at the bottom of the screen. These lists can be used in a number of ways. For instance, the plant you were most recently looking at can be added to a shopping list with a single click of the mouse button and then further notes added. While helpful, this list maker is not a word processor-some basic features such as the ability to jump around by word with the Ctrl arrow keys is missing. Anyone wishing to keep a more detailed list or journal may wish to open it in their standard word processor and then toggle between the two programs. This is actually faster than jumping to the list section of the CD-ROM.
What's the bottom line on Microsoft Complete Gardening? This is a handsome disc filled with lots of useful information presented in a graceful, serene manner. It is relatively easy to navigate and while performance is a bit sluggish on a double speed drive, the program is solid and works as expected. This in itself is no small feat, since a recent industry survey found that as many as 70 percent of the discs on the market in 1995 did not work properly on the machines they were designed for. Microsoft, as usual, has done its homework. The company was not the first to market a gardening encyclopedia, but they have produced one of the best. This disc will be an elegant and useful addition to the library of any home gardener. It is clearly the best choice for anyone running Windows 95.
May all your tomatoes be red and juicy, your flowers all smell sweetly, and the thorns you meet all have mercy.
John Raabe is a home designer and energy consultant currently developing a Design Kit for homeowners wanting to build an earth-responsive new house. You may e-mail jraabe@whidbey.com to obtain more information.
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