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The role that gardening and art could play as therapy
'Not seen very often!' (Private Collection)
My Watercolours.com A Window to the Garden DH Designs

Biography of Jodarose

A few years back I ran a gardening business called Jodarose, the name arising from an amalgamation of my families initials. My business gave me the opportunity to design, create and look after many gardens. This gave me the confidence to become a gardening tutor. I began teaching gardening in September 1997. After a couple of years or so, in order to help my students I thought it would be a good idea to put together an educational package online - the seed was sown, you might say! Around the turn of the century I began to paint again and to my surprise people were wanting to buy one or two of my paintings! With the idea of an online gardening site still at the back of my mind and the ever increasing pictures laying around I had painted, I thought “What about combining an online gardening website with a gallery!” Whilst I found it fairly easy to get my head around the computer, the internet always seemed a daunting place to me, so that idea I had, that seed I had sown, nestled at the back of my mind amongst the ‘things to do’ pile!

Through teaching my own gardening courses and the many, (ten) City & Guilds Gardening courses I have covered, I had put together a large amount of teaching aids and handouts. So the obvious choice was to use some of this teaching material to form a website. “A Website!” I thought, “I can’t put together a website!” To me, this internet thing was still ‘another world’! Anyway, to avoid being accused of a lack of drive I got going on tending to that seed - after being sown five years previously!

As most of my gardening experience was as a result of my business I named the website after it. The site was started in 2005 and unleashed onto the World Wide Web during August of that year.For it's logo I used a rose I had created using a computer programme shortly after the sad and sudden death of Princess Diana.
The Foyer of Jodarose.com in 2005 Being the first time I had attempted putting together a website it was certainly a learning curve. I found it difficult to settle on the sites design, all I knew was that I wanted it to be a bit different! After having the ‘normal home page’ type of site for a while I decided in the end to design the site like virtual rooms. Directly opposite is an image of what was the 'Foyer' - the welcome page if you like. There was a doorway to a gallery, studio and even a virtual garden!
This is an image of 'The Gallery' with links to various rooms of paintings. There was even an 'elevator' to upstairs, where there where more rooms! The idea I had of the doorways being links into the different sections of the site was, I thought brilliant! The design stayed in this virtual style for a few months. However, judging by the feedback I was receiving it would appear that only I thought it was such a good idea! Some of the visitors were finding the site confusing and hard to navigate. So it was sadly, perhaps time to make Jodarose.com more user friendly! The Gallery as it was in 2005
Original Homepage Original Window to the Garden Homepage

The homepage style of website I had to begin with was still on file and was similar to the two pages opposite... these are the original home pages of the painting and gardening section respectively. To save me a lot of work, what was needed was a template with a series of easy to define links to sit all the pages on I had saved from the original site.

Jodarose.com becoming more conventional! The Window to the Garden Home Page

As can be seen by the two examples above, that’s what I did! A bit of tweaking to all the original pages and they were systematically placed upon a template with a series of links and buttons. As I was basically making Jodarose.com more or less like every other site you see on the web, I decided to add a few features in order to try and create more interest for our visitors.

I incorporated a row of links under the template’s header to include links to other sites such as Amazon.co.uk or pages of mine such as a Links Page and a Reference Page. The Links Page featured websites with exchanged links to this site or sites that were close with this site by the work they do - such as the City & Guilds website through my teaching. On The Reference Page I listed links to other sites I enjoyed browsing. I also included links to practical sites such as the online version of the Cambridge Dictionary on the same page. To introduce another facility to Jodarose.com we teamed up with Amazon.co.uk by becoming an associate. This meant that visitors to this site could shop with them from here if they wished.

Others in the row of links I created on the template were named, ‘Radio’, ‘Jem’ and ‘Forum’. The link Radio took the visitor to my Brother-in-Laws online radio station, Rewind45. It no longer exists now but I regularly had it on whilst working on the site and enjoyed being evoked by those classic tracks from my past! My wife is a Counsellor and Jem is her website. In order to increase feedback I created a Forum. Apart from one or two genuine postings I have to say it was a complete waist of time, becoming nothing more than a magnet for junk and spam.
Version Three Painting section Version Three WttG

Version3 of the site was published in early 2007. There was much more of a connection to East Anglia, with a link to my paintings covering the area. The disaster that was the original forum was replaced with a ‘Visitors Book'. My aim for the site was to be linked to the area in which I live, with a magazine 'feel' to it, or Magasite as I called it! The site had 39 pages and 52 links to a variety of great websites!

That’s a brief synopsis on the early trials and tribulations with creating a favourable environment for the seed that is now Jodarose.com!

We are now on version4 - which is a slimmed down version, unlike it's Author! Whilst still connected, the gardening section is now a website in it's own right, (A Window to the Garden), as is the painting section, (MyWatercolours.com). Jodarose.com now celebrates my love of the area in which I live and plays host for my interests! With my experience gained from creating my websites there is now another section included, enabling me to help others with their sites and put into practise another of my interests...Website Design!

 

 

Jodarose & Amazon
Biography

 
 
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'Cromwell Road' (Private Collection)

 

'Off we go' (The Local Gallery)

'Out to Sea' (The Local Gallery)

 

'Mum & Child' (Private Collection)

 

 

 

'Nice Day...' (Private Collection)

 

Website: DH Designs
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