The look and feel of GrowGuides.net is fairly pleasant, consistent and of course its green color scheme is fitting to its topic as well as the background leaves on the top and the beautiful green plant on the left. It's good to see advertisements adapted to the color scheme as well making them feel better integrated. The mix of orange on titles and borders works quite well with green and gives the site a more bright and positive feel. I also like the RSS button and its position beneath the plant image.

It's overall a neat package with not much to complain about, except perhaps the amount of ads on some pages especially where square ads end up stacked up on top of each other or disrupting the flow of the "share and enjoy" button bar.

I've noticed that the articles are tagged, but there is no tag cloud anywhere so this might be a valuable addition to make.

I think it would be a great idea to add images of plants, veggies etc. that are being talked about in each grow guide so that someone browsing the site can simultaneously learn to recognize or learn visually how each plant looks like. It would also probably add to the visual appeal of articles. This would of course have to be done in a consistent manner across articles and in a way that wont be disrupted by advertising.

I would like to make further suggestions for improvement, but that would probably involve a sort of a redesign that would make the site look more unique and impressive perhaps including such things as a real logo, additional styling of sidebars etc. However this works and is overall not a bad presentation.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

The design style, domain name and titles of the site and articles are quite consistent in terms of conveying the theme and purpose of the site as obviously being about guides to growing.. stuff that can be grown I suppose (including, according to categories, flowers, fruits, plants, trees and vegetables). As such the site is pretty much left to be self-explanatory without any introduction or about page that could perhaps outline some highlights. But nevertheless the purpose is clear and quite singular.

Focus Rating: 10/10.

Content:

I've counted 71 articles so far about growing various flowers, fruits, plants, vegetables which is a pretty good database of information. Articles usually start with an introduction to the thing being grown including its highlights and properties. Some articles follow an outline starting with needed materials then procedures and location while others have numbered steps, albeit numbers are expressed in words which might actually have some advantages. Maybe a good thing would be to standardize on a single outline across all articles as a feature. I personally prefer the numbered approach because it gives more of a "step by step" dynamic to articles which is what most people might expect "guides" to offer.

From a sample I reviewed articles seem to be well written, somewhat engaging especially in the beginning with commentary on the plant being grown and continuing with relatively condensed set of instructions and information regarding the process involved and important preconditions such as the choice of location.

Content: 10/10