About the Gardener's HQ Website, Contact Information and Social Channels
My name is Dr. Dean Ravenscroft, but feel free to call me Deano. I first started writing about plants over on my other site Plant Biology Advice (PBA) over fifteen years ago, as that site developed, it grew to contain information on how to grow over 600 different genera of plants.
I, Deano, busy writing new content for the Gardener's HQ website.
Unfortunately, the more scientific format of the PBA site was a little bit restrictive, especially with regard to providing gardening advice in a more relaxed manner.
There was also the problem that although plants from a given genus could often be treated by gardeners in a somewhat similar manner, those containing hundreds of species, and with large variations of size and habit, often need to be treated very differently in the garden.
Hence the birth of the Gardener's HQ site. Which allows me to give both general genus growing information, and to provide in-depth plant species and cultivar specific growing guides for the more commonly grown garden species. It also allows me to delve into more general gardening topics, and thus cover the sides of plant biology and botany that I truly love.
My Biological Background
I have had a keen interest in plants since I was a child. I was given a patch of soil of my own in which I haphazardly spread a load of Lupine and Poppy seeds; as a toddler I was amazed at my creation!
Since then I have studied plant biology at Ordinary (O.U), Masters (University of York), and Doctorate levels (U.E.A. / John Innes Centre), and have carried out post-doctoral research work on ‘flowering time’ at the MPIZ in Cologne, and the Rice genome database at Cornell university in the U.S.A. I consider myself well-versed in botany and plant biology, with extensive experience cultivating plants in traditional home gardens, university greenhouses, and specialized environmentally controlled settings. For over two decades, I've assisted numerous gardeners and budding botanists in honing their skills and achieving their gardening and research aspirations.
Here are some of the publications that I am listed as a co-author on if you are interested in a read: Science; EMBO (Pubmed Central); Nature biotechnology.
How to Contact the Gardener's HQ Website
If you have questions, feedback, or simply want to chat about gardening, feel free to reach out using the methods below:
- Drop Me an Email: deanr@gardenershq.com
- Media inquiries: media@gardenershq.com
- Facebook Page
- Pinterest Page
- Gardener's HQ on YouTube
I am glad that the Gardener's HQ website allows me to delve deeper into specific garden plant species and varieties more commonly found in gardens. And it also gives me the opportunity to write about non-plant-growing-specific aspects of gardening such as landscaping, attracting (and preventing) animals to the garden, general gardening talk and ideas.
I am hopeful that the information on this site will be of great use to gardeners everywhere.
I also hope the thousands of photographs (and videos) on the site makes it easy to visualize how a plant is going to look in your garden.
Over the years, I have transferred – and improved upon – all of the plant genus information from the old site to Gardener's HQ, and have added hundred of pages on growing specific garden plants. My main aim is to eventually cover ~1,400 garden plant specific pages, and to have videos for as many as of these as possible. This should keep me busy for a few years :-)
Have fun in the garden, Deano
