The Lawn to Garden Project is a class project for ENGCMP 0600 Intro to Technical Writing at the University of Pittsburgh, taught by Stephen Quigley. Jared Garthwait, Elijah Hyndman, Paul Kirby, Evan Rafferty, and Pamela Smith contributed to this project.
The website files can be found at: https://elijahhyndman.github.io/ENGCMP0600_LawnGarden/ Original Version 1.0 as of 3/25/22.
The purpose of this project is to provide access to information on how to build and maintain a home garden in a suburban setting. Information in the initial version of this project is divided by the two major urban areas in the state of Pennsylvania – Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Subsections of the website provide further information on local laws, gardening ethics, crop recommendations and maintenence, and gardening inclusion.
From our home page, users can navigate to other pages of information about how to build and maintain a home garden.
Select a city from the map of Pennsylvania to read geographically relevant information on gardening laws and zones for that city.
Scroll past the map on the home page to access four other buttons. These buttons will take you to pages on broader gardening topics. The functions of these buttons are listed below.
- 'Conversion Process': Contains information on how to convert a common yard or lawn into a food garden. Instructions for how to build an in-ground or raised garden bed are included.
- 'Plant Care': Contains information on how to tend to food-producing crops in a home setting.
- 'Ethics': Contains information on pesticides and mindful gardening practices.
- 'Inclusion': Contains information on how to maintain crops in limited spaces, such as an apartment. Also contains information on low cost gardening options.
All of these pages have a bar of buttons at the top. Use these buttons to navigate to other pages, as well as the main home page.
The Lawn to Garden Project is an open-source project. Anyone can contribute geograpically-specific information on gardening to the project. We also welcome contributions on how to make gardening more inclusive. Use the following steps to contribute a new page to the website.
- Download the Lawn to Garden folder from GitHub.
- Create a copy of the template.html file from the folder, and open this copy in a text editor like Atom. Download the "Preview HTML" package on Atom if not already downloaded.
- Name this file "laws_[City_Name].html"
- Edit the content of your file with the local laws and gardening recommendatons of your chosen city.
- Open the index.html file from the project folder in your text editor.
- Scroll to the "State Picture" section of the file.
- Copy and paste the template button copypasta below the other existing buttons.
- Change the "Top: X" and "Left: X" values until your button matches the geographic location of your chosen city.
- Change the href="link" button code to your .html file name. This links the button to your file.
- If your file name was "laws_Erie.html", this code would be changed to href="laws_Erie.html"
- Reupload your edited index.html and laws_[City_Name].html files to the Lawn to Garden Project GitHub folder.
- Check that your new page displays correctly on the website.
Refer to this section for frequently asked questions about the Lawn to Garden project, and their answers.
- How do I contribute information on inclusive gardening?
- Feel free to edit the "ethics.html" or the "inclusion.html" with relevant information. Edit the file(s) in a text editor and reupload to the Lawn to Garden Project GitHub folder. Be sure to mark edits clearly with your name and contribution date.
- Who can I contact with questions about this project?
-Below are the emails of the website's original contributors, as well as their area of contribution.
- Jared Garthwait (laws) – jmg290@pitt.edu
- Elijah Hyndman (code writer) – eah104@pitt.edu
- Paul Kirby (conversion) – pek42@pitt.edu
- Evan Rafferty (inclusion) – evanrafferty@pitt.edu
- Pamela Smith (ethics, doc writer) – prs97@pitt.edu
- I have no content to contribute. Can I still help this project?
- Yes. Promote the website and its resources to those that may need it, or may be able to contribute content themselves. Contact us at the emails above about issues, bugs, or fact checks.
The Lawn to Garden project is committed to including all people in the pursuit of gardening. We value different perspectives and contributions to our project because it makes food gardening more accessible. All people deserve a healthy source of food, and the Lawn to Garden project is committed to reaching this goal, even in a small way.