Add to the library

A photograph can go on one page, and only if you say so

Send a photograph with the box ticked and it may go on the library page for the plant it shows, with your name under it (or no name, if you leave none): sending it is your yes. That is the only place it can appear — not on another page, not on social, not in an advert, and not passed to anybody else. There is one box, and a photograph cannot be sent without it: it says the photograph is yours, of a plant you own, and that Mysterious Yard may show it there. A photograph sent before there was one box, without the permission, stays private, as a reference to look at while working out whether a correction is right, unless its sender says yes on the private page their send has. A photograph that is published appears on that entry's page: in its own frame under the entry's picture, or in the section called Grown by the community, with how you said it is grown (only what you filled in: in the ground or a pot, indoors or out, which state, how old, what it grows beside, never a town or an address) and your name if you left one. It is described as a photograph sent as that plant by a grower, not as a plant grown here. Every photograph waits for a person at the shop, who looks at it before it goes on a page. Visitors can give a published photograph a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Thumbs alone never take a photograph down: one that many of them mark down is looked at by a person at the shop, who decides whether it stays. It is not used as evidence for the name it arrives under: it adds a picture and a credit to the page, and changes nothing else on it.

What you send stays yours

You keep the copyright in your own words and your own photographs. Sending words here gives Mysterious Yard permission to publish those words on this site — it does not hand the work over, and it is not exclusive: you can still post them anywhere else you like. A photograph works the same way, within the one page named above.

It will probably be edited

A definition is rewritten to match the rest of the library before it goes anywhere: house wording, house shape, and checked against more than one source. What appears may read quite differently from what you sent. If that is not something you want, this is the point to stop. A photograph is not retouched and nothing is cropped out of the frame, but it does not survive untouched either: every picture sent here is turned the right way up, scaled down to fit 1600 pixels if it is larger, and saved again as a WebP — the same step that strips the location and camera data out of it. It comes out a shade softer than the file you sent. Otherwise it is your picture. A plain fact about a plant that the library's own check and its house expert can already vouch for in every word, against sources the library holds, may be kept by the shop's own screen on the shop's record for that plant, without a person looking first. That record is not shown to visitors, your name is kept with it if you left one, and it comes off whenever you ask. The plant's history keeps one line saying that a note from a grower was added or taken off, with the date and with neither your name nor your words. Every other note waits for a person.

Only your own plants, and nothing private

Send a photograph only if you took it, of a plant you own. Nothing that gives away where you live or who somebody is: a house number, a street sign, a number plate, a letter or a document. Every photograph that is kept has its location data and camera metadata stripped before it is stored, and the file you uploaded is never written to disk.

Credit, if you want it

Leave a name and it goes beside the entry your words become, and under your photograph if one is published. Leave the name blank and nothing says who sent it — a photograph can still be published, it just carries no byline. Giving an email address is optional, and only for entries in the monthly giveaway. It is turned into a scrambled code at once and the address itself is not kept. Without one, what you send is still read, and it earns no entries. A note with no photo earns none either. If you also tick the offers box, that address is emailed one link; it goes on the offers list, which keeps the address until its owner leaves with one tap, only if its owner opens the link and presses the button. Nothing is written down about it before that. A note the shop's screen keeps on a plant's record carries your name there, and is not shown to visitors.

What is not welcome

This is a horticulture site and it stays one. Words about consuming these plants, advertising and abuse are turned down automatically and are not passed on to anybody. Pictures and words about drugs, sexual content, violence, hate, somebody's private details, or anything that is not about these plants are not wanted: the shop's own screen reads each one first and blocks what breaks these rules before I see it, and nothing it blocks is kept.

Turning something down, and taking something back

Not everything sent is used, and there is no appeal process — this is one grower's reference library, not a wiki. Nothing you send is passed to anyone else, except the checking service the shop uses to read it, or used for anything but this site. If you change your mind, say so on the contact page with roughly what you sent and when: words and photographs already published are taken down, and the photograph is deleted off the disk as well. The plant's history keeps one line saying that something from a grower was added or taken off, with the date and with neither your name nor your words.

I wrote this page myself, for a one-person nursery, in plain English — a lawyer did not write it, and where a term here is one California law does not let a seller change, the law wins. Ask me anything about it before you send something rather than after.