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PLANTS magazine as a print-based magazine finished publication in 2005 after 10 years.

The website is gradually being rebuilt after our web developers went bust and we lost all our records and customer orders... and the entire site ... bear with us as we rebuild this great resource and start to add to it and expand it.

This is our story:


The print-based PLANTS magazine was my labour of love and had been part of my life for a long time.

I wanted to set up a newsletter about new garden plants.

Why?

I've been a professional news and PR photographer for 30 years, but I have been commissioned to write articles about plants and gardens for newspapers, magazines and websites for more than 25 years.

New garden plants, and seeds, were always the most interesting events of the year and I was fascinated where they came from, what their background was and who was the breeder / discoverer.

I realised that to show people what the new plants looked like, I needed to print in colour .. out went the newsletter and in came a magazine concept. Small problem. I'd never produced a magazine before, and I didn't have a computer.
So I decided to learn about computers (on an Apple Mac) at night class and also took a class in using the DTP program Quark Xpress.
Once I had done that I borrowed 500.00 UK Pounds from my parents and the first issue appeared not long after.I used the computers after hours at work to produce the first issue, and had my negatives transferred to Kodak Photo CD .. which was pretty cutting edge back in 1995!
The magazine, although niche and small, was well received by those who received it - and I still have more than 45 original subscribers from then who have stayed the course!

Over the years the magazine has changed in looks, but never in content and I still manage to find lots of information that's of interest to enthusiasts and plant . I found the information superhighway since it's inception some ten years ago.

Before the internet was sexy, my magazine was was online - albeit in a crude form!

Within 3 years I had subscribers in 32 countries across the world ... WOW!

PLANTS magazine was established for 10 years with 7 years of successful ordering via the Internet. It was full of plant news and photographs from around the globe. What can be a new plant one year in the UK is often launched in New Zealand or the US the next year, and vice-versa.

Nursery catalogues were reviewed and addresses / phone numbers / fax / web and e-mail contacts were given wherever possible so that enthusiasts or professionals involved in the global plant trade know who and where to contact.

It was very different and much more accessible than any other specialist magazines - it really was for the keen enthusiast, plant professional and plantaholic - not a novice gardener.

The magazine was published every 14 - 16 weeks. Back Issues - 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33 and final edition 34 are still available in small numbers.

The magazine was A5 (digest) in size, 52 pages with 16 pages in full colour. It's packed full of information for plant enthusiasts that is available nowhere else in the world - well, no unless you have plenty of time and / or people working for you to gather the information.

PLANTS magazine may have now finished publication, but information from the ten years it was published will be added to this site for the benefit of all plant enthusiasts ...

Dirk van der Werff

Editor / Publisher

1995 - 2006