Horticulture Guy was launched in 1996 while I was in Longwood Graduate Program at the University of Delaware. I had left my radio show “The Gardening Gurus” with cohost David Dahnke a coworker at the Environmental Center (Wyckoff, NJ) and missed helping home gardeners. The internet was in its infancy and my father steered me to Geocities and I set up a free website. The question and answer section was (and still is) the most popular section. Rather than being a solo Guru I decided to use a new name that was coined by my friend Carli (who is still a good friend to this day), a college summer intern at the Environmental Center. She had a few other friends named Peter and to distinguish me she would say ” you know my friend Peter … the horticulture guy”.
The website won awards from PC Magazine in 1996 and 1997. Eventually I graduated from Geocities and acquired the domain name HorticultureGuy.com.