Landscape and Urban Design - is this the future format for horticulture magazines?

How do you prefer to take your gardening news?

The old timers are rigidly stuck to the glossy mag but the newbies are embracing the digital age.

What if you are able to combine the two and have a printable on line magazine?

I received an email from Landscape & Urban Design yesterday but didn't have enough time to write about it. What caught my eye wasn't necessarily the contents of Landscape & Urban Design but the way in which the website delivers it's content.

I spent a few minutes flicking through the on line pages and it got me thinking. Any horticulture publication can produce a magazine in this format that gives the reader a same experience as flicking through a publication that you would buy off the shelf

Can you imagine being able to download and print the pages, including the photographs, and read the content at your leisure in your deckchair on a warm spring morning in the garden?

Would this be a fair compromise for those desperately wanting to feel the sheets between their fingers but without the publisher being faces with the huge cost of print and distribution?

The format is not a new one and I remember trialling the Daily Mail the same way a few months back (funny enough I ditched it in favour of the normal website format because the Mail wanted to charge me to view the newspaper format)

If other publishers were to make the magazine available for free and covered the cost via the advertisers it could actually, in my opinion, see a reversal of their respective fortunes.

What are your views Will it work?

The Landscape and Urban Design publication is great for anyone that is responsible for landscape specifications.

Anything from recycled plastic products for environmental and garden use to sprinkler systems or remote controlled rotary mowers to use on steep banks.

What is more, and this is a model that all magazine publishers in the UK horticulture and garden trade should investigate, is the magazine is provided free to all of the 40,000 readership and paid for totally by advertising.