I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.

The following is text from the Garden Writers Association's media release about a new digital magazine ostensibly about gardening. Call me curmudgeon, call me communist, but I find this offensive.


"Lovers of the gardening lifestyle can now enjoy a marvelous new digital publication designed just for them. GIE Media has launched its first-ever consumer magazine, A Garden Life, as a free app for iPad and Android tablet platforms. The premiere issue is available for download now on iTunes/Apple Store  or get it on the Android Market.

Each issue of A Garden Life will explore and celebrate the concept of "life as a garden." GIE Media Chairman, Richard Foster, describes the magazine's mission: "To create a community of consumers with shared values and interests in lifestyle subject areas such as healthy living, that includes growing and preparing clean food, contributing to community, exploring travel and adventure, art and literature, as well as having a passion for diverse aspects of nature and gardening." GIE will publish six issues of A Garden Life in 2012 (March, May, June, July/August, September/October, November/December).

A Garden Life will also utilize the latest social media tools to stimulate active reader engagement with its editors and contributors, as well as with one another, be it across town or around the world. "Tablet mobile technology - and the social media it facilitates - can stimulate sharing of ideas through direct one-to-one connections by email and messaging, and simple tools for sharing imagery, audio and video," says Foster.

A Garden Life has a companion website (www.agardenlife.com) that will offer the magazine app content to consumers who do not yet use tablet technology. The website will include deep databases of horticultural products such as perennials, annuals, succulents, grasses, trees, ornamentals and lawn and garden hard-goods items. GIE will also offer consumer readers a regular electronic newsletter of garden center product insights at no charge."

This is not my idea of a desirable gardening publication. It's intended, as they say, for the 'lovers of the gardening lifestyle' and the 'consumer readers' out there. Everything you love is now a commodity.