Rec.gardens.ecosystems is a Usenet newsgroup intended for the discussion of gardening topics from an ecological perspective. Gardening based on these insights requires knowledge about soil, compost, plant nutrition, gardening practices, botany, the biology of pests, diseases, weeds and wildlife. Gardening from an ecological perspective incorporates organic gardening and Integrated Pest Management (IPM), but is not identical to either of them. What they have in common is that both can only be successful if based on a knowledge of how nature works.