wait a minute, the what garden?

am i in the right place?

Let me preface the existence of this place by being perfectly honest--this site's name is an intentional twist on the name of another, far superior, CSS site, David Shea's The CSS Zen Garden. If you've never been to the Zen Garden, go right now. It's an amazing place. Nowhere else can you see so clearly the real power that CSS has to change the way we design pages. And the people with work showcased there are truly masters of the trade.

But, there's a flip side to the coin, and it is this flip side that has inspired the Vegetable Garden into existence, and this flip side is called my inferiority complex.

Let's face it, what the Zen Garden showcases is not only the power of CSS, but the power of CSS in the hands of the digitally gifted. These people are more than coders, more than designers, they're ARTISTS. They have vision.

Me, I have no vision. But I still love and use css. I still prefer css to tables any day of the week and I still think that even I (and maybe you) with my puny vision and my lame-duck graphics can make some really great things happen with clean code and a stylesheet.

And so here we are, The CSS Vegetable Garden, not a place of zen-like beauty and simplicity, but a place for digging in the dirt and getting results, a practical css place.

Here's a smattering of what you can find in these pages...

• If you're looking for examples and tutorials on ways to use CSS, especially for page layout, check out the vegetables.
• If you want information on HTML and XHTML, take a look at mulching.
• If you're looking for other CSS design resources on the web, go to the farmers' market.
• If you want information about me (for lawsuits and such) check out the gardener.
• If you're having problems with making your vegetables (css design tricks) grow, you might find solutions in pests and blights.
• If you need information on what kinds of attributes and properties you can manipulate with CSS, go to the potting shed.

And of course, try to remember that I'm not a seasoned veteran of the browser-wars and not a creative director of anything more glamourous than the notebook I doodle in while watching TV. I'm just a guy who's trying to learn as much as he can about what seems to be the best thing going in web design today, and then trying even harder to make it work. When (and if) I'm successful, I'll try to share it with you here.