Putting down roots

By Cristin Ross

August 18, 2008 03:00 pm

— Seeds? Check. Water? Check.Sunlight? Check. Soil? Check. The Internet?
Some people wouldn’t think the World Wide Web would appear on a gardener’s list of supplies, but thanks to one of Jacksonville’s newest residents, the Information Superhighway is turning out to be a gardener’s best friend — next to fertilizer, of course.
Dave Whitinger — founder of the popular Web site Dave’sGarden.com — his wife, Trish and their children, Katie, Jon, Abigail and Simon recently relocated to Jacksonville from Bryan-College Station.
“We knew we didn’t want to stay in Bryan, but we wanted to stay in Texas,” Whitinger explained. “When we started looking for somewhere to really settle down, we just drove through East Texas and fell in love with Jacksonville.”
Choosing the right place to live, however, wasn’t just about looking for a friendly populace or affordable housing (both of which Whitinger said makes living in Jacksonville that much better).
The family’s new place had to be suitable for their extended family — the myriad plants that make up their numerous gardens.
“We lived in Kerrville for awhile and loved it, but being out in West Texas, we didn’t get a lot of rain,” Whitinger said. “We were really surprised with the topography here, especially when we stopped at Love’s Lookout the first time — everything was so green.
“It was an easy decision to make to move here.”
The couple bought a house in Jacksonville, property in Cherokee County and immediately got their hands dirty by planting flower beds, vegetable gardens, fruit trees and a plethora of potted plants.
“The kids’ gardens did really well this summer,” Whitinger said, with more than a hint of pride in his voice. “The drought isn’t helping my fruit trees at all, though. They’re almost dead. We’ve got some other trees, oaks mostly, that we’re holding until the fall to plant.
“We’re installing a well, so hopefully, we won’t have too much of a problem in the future.”
The family also raises cows, chickens, pigs, goats and guinea pigs, which the children are in charge of maintaining every day.
“The best part is this is something we can all do together,” Trish Whitinger said. “My dad always planted a huge vegetable garden, and his mom is also an avid gardener. It means a lot to be able to pass down a little of that heritage to our children.”
The Whitinger children aren’t the only ones who benefit from that heritage.
With an average of 1.8 million visitors to Dave’sGarden.com each month, Whitinger is able to sow the seeds of a love of gardening with people from all over the world.
“People from every country but North Korea visit the site regularly,” Whitinger said. “It’s interesting to see so many people getting together because of a common interest. A couple of regular visitors are from India and Pakistan. They talk to one another all the time, but their countries are enemies.
“A family member of another of our regulars on the site told me once that her father would be dead if he hadn’t found the site,” Whitinger recalled. “He’d needed a medical procedure done but wasn’t interested in getting it because he felt like his life was over.
“But then he found the Web site, got interested and made all these friends. He’s doing extremely well now.”
Whitinger — who, along with his twin brother, is the youngest of five — said he’s grateful he’s been able to so successfully blend his love of gardening with his other passion, computers.
His father was an electrical engineer, and Whitinger remembers as a child getting to play with all sorts of electronic gizmos, odds and ends.
“We had a huge room in the basement that was literally waist-deep full of computers and other stuff,” he said with a laugh. “My dad let me play with things. I got to take stuff apart and break stuff. And this is in the mid-’70s, so some of this stuff was massive.”
When he was just 13, modems had just been released and were becoming increasingly popular with the average computer-using consumer. He started a file sharing project known as a bulletin board service — a precursor to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and blogs.
“I learned a lot about people and communities from that,” he said.
As the Internet became more mainstream and the dot-com industry grew, Whitinger was able to parlay what he’d learned from “goofing around with computers,” as he terms it, into a successful Lennox news site, which he was fortunate enough to sell just before the bubble burst on the dot-commers in 1999.
“They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he joked.
Whitinger, who hails from a long line of educators, admitted at one point his never attending college caused some concern for his dad.
“He was real big on going to college,” Whitinger said. “Since I didn’t go to college, he was pretty worried for a while, wondering how things would work out for me. He’s not worried now.”
Whitinger said after he’d sold his Lennox site, he had more time to get serious about gardening.
“I had all this free time, I just really got into all the different aspects of gardening,” he confessed.
His advice to a novice gardener?
“Have fun with it,” he said. “Just put it in the ground and if you have to, move it later.
“If you’re landscaping your yard, don’t get overwhelmed with the size of a job or bogged down in planning every little thing out. It’s not supposed to be like that.”

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