My Gardening Journey is a UK-based gardening and self-sufficiency website. We want this site to be useful, welcoming and safe for readers. This page explains how we handle comments, online safety concerns, complaints, moderation decisions and reports of unlawful or harmful material.
Important: all comments on this website are held for moderation before publication. Comments do not appear automatically.
1. Our approach
We take a safety-first approach to user comments and user-submitted content. We aim to reduce the risk of unlawful, abusive, misleading or harmful material appearing on the site, while still allowing fair, civil and relevant discussion.
- All comments are reviewed before publication.
- We may refuse, edit for clarity, or remove comments at our discretion.
- We may disable comments on individual posts or across the site if we believe this is necessary for safety, moderation, legal or operational reasons.
- We may retain moderation records where reasonably necessary for legal, safeguarding, security or complaint-handling purposes.
2. What users may and may not post
We welcome lawful, relevant and respectful discussion connected to the subject of the site.
We do not allow comments or submissions that include, promote, encourage or facilitate:
- illegal content or criminal activity;
- threats, intimidation, harassment, stalking or bullying;
- hate speech or discriminatory abuse;
- content encouraging violence;
- content encouraging or assisting suicide, self-harm or eating disorders;
- sexual exploitation or abuse, including any sexual content involving minors;
- fraud, phishing, impersonation or scams;
- doxxing, privacy breaches or the sharing of another person’s personal information without permission;
- obscene, pornographic or grossly offensive material;
- copyright infringement or unlawful use of third-party material;
- spam, malicious links, malware or deceptive promotions.
We may also reject content that is off-topic, repetitive, misleading, inflammatory, commercially manipulative or otherwise unsuitable for this website.
3. Illegal content risk assessment summary
Because this site allows user comments, we keep the risk of unlawful user-generated content under review. Our current public assessment is that the overall risk level of the comments function is low to moderate, primarily because comments are pre-moderated and discussion is limited to a narrow gardening and self-sufficiency context.
The main risks we monitor for are:
- abusive or harassing comments;
- spam and malicious links;
- impersonation or deceptive promotions;
- privacy breaches, including sharing identifying information;
- comments that promote unlawful, dangerous or harmful behaviour.
Our principal controls are:
- pre-moderation of all comments before publication;
- manual review of comment content, links and tone;
- the right to reject, remove or close comments;
- a public reporting route for unlawful or harmful content;
- record-keeping for significant moderation and complaint decisions where appropriate.
We review this assessment periodically and may update our controls if site features, comment volume, user behaviour or legal expectations change.
4. Children’s access assessment summary
My Gardening Journey is a general-interest gardening website and is not designed or marketed specifically to children. However, we recognise that gardening, growing food and keeping animals may be of interest to families, schools and younger users. We therefore take a cautious approach.
- We do not invite children to post personal information.
- We pre-moderate all comments before publication.
- We do not knowingly approve content that is unsafe, exploitative or inappropriate for younger users.
- We may remove content or close comments where child-safety concerns arise.
If you are under 18, please do not post personal, private or identifying information in comments or messages.
Parents, guardians and affected persons may contact us to report concerns about content involving a child or young person.
5. Moderation and escalation process
Our moderation process is designed to be proportionate to a small content website with pre-moderated comments.
- Submission: a user submits a comment.
- Hold for moderation: the comment is not published automatically.
- Manual review: we review relevance, tone, links, safety and legality.
- Decision: we approve, decline, edit for minor clarity issues, or remove.
- Escalation: where content appears unlawful, threatening, exploitative, deceptive, privacy-invasive or otherwise serious, we may escalate the matter internally for further review and may preserve evidence, report to relevant service providers, or contact law enforcement or other appropriate authorities where justified.
- Follow-up: where appropriate, we may close comments on the relevant post, block repeat submissions, or amend site settings to reduce further risk.
We are not obliged to publish any comment submitted to the site.
6. Reporting unlawful, unsafe or abusive content
If you believe content on this website is unlawful, abusive, unsafe, infringes your rights, breaches privacy, or should otherwise be reviewed urgently, please contact us using our contact page: https://mygardeningjourney.com/contact/
Please include, where possible:
- the page URL;
- a description of the content or comment;
- why you believe it is unlawful, unsafe or in breach of this page;
- screenshots or supporting evidence if available;
- your contact details if you want a reply.
We review reports as quickly as reasonably possible. Priority is given to reports involving possible illegality, child safety, threats, harassment, impersonation, fraud, privacy breaches or urgent safeguarding concerns.
7. Complaints and appeals
If you have reported content, had a comment rejected or removed, or believe a moderation decision was handled unfairly, you may submit a complaint through our contact page: https://mygardeningjourney.com/contact/
Please include:
- your name and contact details;
- the relevant page URL;
- the content or decision you are complaining about;
- the reason for your complaint;
- any supporting evidence.
We will review complaints fairly and proportionately. We may uphold the original decision, revise it, remove content, refuse publication, or take other reasonable action.
8. Privacy and personal information
Please do not post personal, private or confidential information about yourself or anyone else in comments. We may remove content that appears to disclose personal data, confidential material or information that could create a safeguarding, privacy or security risk.
We are reviewing and updating our privacy information and cookies information to make them clearer and more complete. Where we collect personal data through comments, forms, analytics, mailing list sign-up or similar tools, we aim to explain what we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it and what rights users have.
9. International visitors
This website is operated from the United Kingdom. We primarily design our safety, moderation and complaint-handling processes to meet applicable UK legal and regulatory requirements.
Where other laws may also apply to our users or services, including applicable platform, intermediary, consumer or data protection laws in other jurisdictions, we aim to respond reasonably and in good faith to lawful notices, complaints and requests.
10. Record-keeping and review
We may keep records of moderation decisions, safety reports, complaints and related actions where reasonably necessary for compliance, security, legal, safeguarding or operational reasons.
We review this page and our moderation approach periodically and may update them to reflect changes in law, regulation, site features or operational practice.
11. Contact us
For online safety reports, complaints or related concerns, please use our contact page:
Last updated: 7 March 2026