Drupal Gardens doesn't support mobile friendly websites at the moment, however they have taken this initiative and this will be included in next version of Drupal Gardens. Here's the link http://groups.drupal.org/mobile/drupal-8 but they are not sure when new version will be released.
A solution is to create a self hosted mobile website and then redirect drupal gardens website to that particular mobile website, detecting the Operating System with the help of javascript. We develop mobile friendly websites using WordPress and custom PHP.
This article demonstrates the very basic things about Drupal Gardens, its good for those who are new to Drupal Gardens and want to learn it thoroughly. Drupal Gardens is actually a Drupal 7 as a Service, which was introduced in 2010. There are a lots new features which were not in standard Drupal, actually Drupal Gardens enhance the services and productivity of Drupal. You can built websites free of cost in Drupal Gardens, hosting is not a problem here. Drupal Gardens is awesome, user-friendly, and very easy product that one can understand easily, I f you are interested, Go Ahead!!!
Some Snapshots from Drupal Gardens which will guide you
Here are some related videos
An introduction to Drupal Gardens:
An overview of Drupal Gardens comparing it to Wordpress.com, Description of different features, modules and properties of Drupal Garden, also the description about the purpose and usage of Drupal Gardens.
Selecting and styling theme in Drupal Gardens:
In this video there is a little description about how to choose and apply the theme in your Drupal Gardens website, and also how to styling the theme i.e how to change font color, background color.It also tells the method of selection elements and publishing of theme.
How to use Webforms in Drupal Gardens:
This is a quick tutorial to guide you the basics of creating Webforms in Drupal Gardens with important fields in a very easiest way which you can easily understand, Webforms allows rich data collection
How to use Menus in Drupal Gardens:
This tutorials guides the method of creating menus both dynamic and custom. Menus helps your site visitors to hit the URLs of their choice directly through navigation. This tutorial simplifies the method of crating menus. You'll enjoy playing with it.
You can create socially smart websites and micro sites that accelerate your business with Drupal Gardens.I have made research that how Drupal Garden is helpful for making a website and I want to share my experience with all.
E-commerce in Drupal Gardens website is not supported directly, but you can use it with the help of third party:
Here are some information which is very useful:
When you registered into Drupal Gardens, you’ll requested
to select any type of website you want to built: Campaign( it is standard),
Product(it is e-commerce), Blog or create of your own choice. . The first three
site options are of specific setup related to their category. And the last one “create
your own” lets you decide everything from scratch to have it 100% personalize.
Configuring Ecommerce in your Drupal Gardens website is a
higher priority feature but yet not directly supported. There are various
third-party payment modules that you can use in your website without having to
export it. Drupal Gardens offers the capability to
import content from an existing site or from a different content management
system. Drupal Gardens does offer a single sign-on system. The same account
allows you, and also your users to access multiple sites. Furthermore, signing
into your account of Drupal Gardens, provides you the functionality to access
to a multisite management panel, in which you can see all your websites at
glance and can manage your domains.
If you are using Drupal Gardens for the first time, you must have to keep the following points in your mind:
Have a copy of your website open after you publish it in another browser window so you can view changes live as they are made, and also see how they behave in other web browsers.
Ensure your content has proper spelling and grammar. Also be sure to delete any placeholder and test content in your site. Chances are, this content is the oldest on your site; go to theContentpage and sort your site content by "Updated date" so that the oldest content is grouped at the top.
If you’re using theStay connected Featureto create links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like, confirm you have added links to your profiles:Configuration > Web Services > Follow Links.
If you took your site offline using Drupal’s maintenance mode, it's time to put it back online:Configuration > Development > Maintenance.
Log out of your site and browse it as an anonymous(unauthenticated) visitor. Confirm site visitors can see and do whatever you want them too, and no more! If needed, correct any permissions for various user roles:People > Permissions.
Upload a small, branded icon for your site known as a "favicon" which will appear in your user's browser tab and bookmarks:Appearance > Brand > Logo.
Optimize your site for search engines and track site traffic statistics by following these SEO instructions
If you turned off CSS and JS aggregation for testing, re-enable them for optimum site speed:Configuration > Development > Performance.
Submit your site to theDrupal Gardens Showcase, post a link to it on Twitter, Facebook and tell the world!
When you create a website in Drupal Gardens, you have to choose a plan for it. Here is some detail about it
Drupal Gardens ranges in price from $11.09/month per site up to $79.95/month per site. There is also a free option for people who are trying out the product or building a prototype site.
Drupal Gardens, originally labeled Acquia Gardens, has been
one of the hot issues at this year's European DrupalCon in Paris. Gardens is a
software-as-a-service (SaaS) version of the highly popular Drupal web
content management system.
We sat down with Tom Erickson, Acquia's CEO, to discuss the
Gardens project, the Drupal Theme Builder, Drupal 7 and Acquia's pathways to
profitability.
Here are some Cons of Drupal Gardens
The biggest drawback may be the inability to add any of the thousoands of contributed modules to your site.
Sooner or later, You will probably outgrow your Drupal Gardens
DG offers a unique themebuilder. Its not awfull, but it does not begin to offer the power and flexibility of full Druapl themeing.
Drupal normally allows you to create or modify your own modules. Your php skills won't help you much in the garden.
Since it uses Drupal administrative interface, its not much easier to use than raw Drupal . Normally, ease of use is the trade offered for reduced power.
You can't learn all the ins and outs of Installing and maintaining Drupal sites with Druapl Gardens. Its a built-in consequence of software as a service.
DG's performance seems erratic. sometimes its quite snappy. there have been periods when its been glacial.
More imposing default user interface.
Less ready made drop-in plugins. You're going to have to get your hands dirty almost every time.
Fewer developers.
More expensive developers.
Drupal Gardens is a little more developer-focused rather than end-user focused, so there will be some confusing descriptions and instructions at times
Even with Drupal Gardens doing all the work up front, Drupal is laid out in a way that’s different than the CMSes you’re
Drupal’s page framework is usually pretty static–a three-column layout with a banner at the top–and if you want anything different, there aren’t always a lot of easy ways to customize it if you’re not a developer.
The Drupal Gardens service was updated on Jan. 30th 2012 with the following new features and enhancements:
Crop, rotate, and resize images in the WYSIWYG editor
Content editors can use the WYSIWYG editor to rotate, crop, and scale images on the fly. To learn more, see Crop, rotate, and scale embedded images.
Customize how comments are displayed
Now you can sort comments per content type and customize commenting labels. For a YouTube-like comment experience, you can sort comments by ‘Newer first’ which also moves the comment form to the top of the comment stream. To learn more, see Customizing comments and sorting.
Eliminate repetitive site administration tasks with bulk operations
For Basic subscription plans or higher, save time and eliminate repetitive administrative tasks by extending your views with Views Bulk Operations. With this feature you can select multiple items in a view (e.g. content, users, media, etc) and click to bulk delete, bulk publish, and more.
Restrict access to your site's content to privileged users.
For Professional subscription plans or higher, Drupal Gardens provides fine-grained access control to your site’s content using Taxonomy-based access control. With this feature, you can define access control rules describing which users (by role) can view, edit, or delete content. Then you can apply these access control rules to any content you want. Optionally, you can allow some users to see a teaser of the content, but then redirect them to another web page when they try to view the full version of content in order to upsell them or provide information about how they can get access to your premium content.
Drupal Gardens is a hosted, self-contained setup of the Drupal 7 content management system. It is an appropriately named walled garden, allowing non-technical people to easily build websites with powerful features.
As Drupal’s answer to other hosted platforms such as Wordpress.com and Blogger, Drupal Gardens boasts an impressive feature set compared to alternative offerings, including hosted Drupal itself.If you’re looking to build a feature rich website fast, Drupal Gardens is the way to go. Many website features not available from traditional self contained hosted solutions can be implemented in Drupal Gardens. Photo and video galleries, contact and survey forms, and configurable user roles are just a sample of what’s available and easy to use on Drupal Gardens.In addition, even the free version of Drupal Gardens’ multi tiered pricing system allows custom domain names, making it a suitable option for small businesses. Lots of themes are available, including options for custom graphics.
photo and video galleries,
custom content, forms and surveys, and
social web experiences.
-- WYSIWYG design tools -- Simple
point-and-click tools to style page
elements and design themes,
as well as advanced CSS tools including
complete history of CSS
changes.
-- Social login and sharing -- Log-in to sites
with their ID's from
Facebook, Twitter, Google+,
and twenty other social and business
networks.
-- Rich media support -- Embed video, images,
RSS items and article
previews from more than 200
sources, simply by pasting a URL.
-- Management dashboard -- Manage hundreds of
websites from a single
dashboard pane, with access
to key site statistics and track visitor
activity.
-- Pre-defined site templates -- Set brand
guidelines, with information
architecture, page layout,
content types, navigation, roles and
permissions.
-- One-click site duplication -- Create a new
site from a pre-defined
template, or duplicate an
existing site, with a click of a button.
-- Integration with third party systems --
Quickly add Javascript
libraries or connect and
share data with third party data and
analytics systems.
Drupal Gardens offers a wealth of features that streamline development
time for creating page layouts, adding image galleries, and theming on
the fly. It also offers Typekit integration, which allows for great web
typography customization.
Drupal Gardens simplifies the design process while also throwing in some restrictions as well.
Know all your content before diving into Drupal Gardens so you can
easily toggle the appropriate on/off switches during setup and
configuration. If you have built out the information architecture and
wireframes prior to setting up your site you should have a pretty good
idea what you’ll need.
Design first, then implement…have an idea of how you want the site to
look before making changes to the appearance in Drupal Gardens.
Drupal Gardens offers hosting, but you can also export a Drupal 7 site
at any time. Buy your URL in advance. You can resolve it to the Drupal
Gardens server or export and host on your own server if you’d like.
And finally, practicing with Drupal Gardens will give you a pretty good
idea what its strength and limitations are. I spent several afternoon
setting up prototypes just to get an idea what I could and couldn’t do
with the product.
Here are some video tutorials
How to Learn Drupal Gardens in an Easy Way: This lesson helps us how to make our routine for learning Drupal Gardens, we are just focused on setting up your daily schedule. Without a schedule and routine, learning Drupal Gardens is going to be tough. Some guidelines are here which help you out.
Drupal Gardens Front Page Overview: Drupal Gardens is the easiest way to learn the new Drupal 7 and in this video we take a look at the front page of Drupal and see how easy it is no configure your content.
Image Styling in Drupal Gardens: In this video, we'll show you how you can add image fields to content types so that you have more control over how images are displayed in your Drupal website. Image styles let you to set standard graphic templates so images on your site have consistent size, scale, and rotation. For example, if you have a multiuser blog, an image style can ensure that user pictures always appear the same size and scale, regardless of the pictures the bloggers upload.
Signing Up for your Drupal Gardens:Drupal is very very powerful but can be VERY complicated... We are using Drupal Gardens to take that complication away from drupal and put us on the fast track of learning.In this video there is a description about how to Sign-Up in Drupal Gardens for new users.
How to use Blocks and Views in Drupal Gardens: Views can make more than just content views. Learn to make lists of taxonomy terms. You can also see how to get a "related content" block depending on taxonomy terms, using "contextual filters". I also show you how to alter the output of each field. This screencast focuses on blocks.
Drupal is very
powerful, and Drupal Gardens is the first site offering the power of
Drupal without the complexity of installing it on your own server.
Your
organization may be rolling out Drupal across their own web sites, which
might make it it worth your consideration.
An overview
of drupal garden’s features
The
Dashboard/Content (status and type)
Structure
Blocks, menus,
taxonomy
Simple Views
Content Types
Taxonomy
Appearance
Theme
Brand
Layout
Styles
Advanced
Features
CSS
People (Users)
Manage users
Permissions
Roles
Modules
Configuration
Reports
And here is the description of all the features used in Drupal
Gardens
Dashboard : click on this to have a quick
look at the basics of how your site is being used : who's online, who has
last registred, which content was most recently added, and similar stuff.
Content : to see a list of all the
content items that have been created for your site : basic page, blog
entries, FAQ items, galleries, news items, polls and webforms. All
these can be sorted depending on status : published, not published,
promoted, not promoted, sticky or not sticky.
Structure : to manage your settings
related to blocks, content form, content types, mailing lists, menus (4
different ones), simple views, and taxonomy.
Appearance : themes, brand, lay-out,
styles and advanced settings (CSS). Basically this is to determine
fonts, colors, links, backgrounds, logo, and borders & spacing (see
screenshot below).
People : for a summary (list) of all
the registered users of your site. With a filter to determine role
(editor, administrator...), permission level (to which modules does that
user have access) and status (active or blocked).
Modules : list of all the modules that
are available for use, including options to edit any of these.
Configuration : related to setting content
authoring, system information, user interface, media, development &
maintenance, web services, search & metadata, regional and language
settings.
Reports : to find out how your site is
performing : status report, log messages, field list, mollom statistics
(this is a built-in anti-spam function), top search phrases.
Theme
Builder features in Drupal Gardens help you design a fantastic theme for your
website.
Theme Builder
in Drupal Gardens is used to control the
display and design elements of your page.
It is used to integrate rich site
features, such as forms, surveys, and media galleries.the theme builder is a
lot of fun to use.
Being able to change the appearance of design elements with
a visual interface is an amazing tool for those of us who either can't afford
to hire a professional shop or who simply have a do-it-yourself attitude. However,
being able to control the size and placement of the different block regions
would go a long way towards making Drupal Gardens more viable for users who
aren't Drupal experts.
Theme Builder help site owners build custom sites and give designers
the ability to test and tailor designs to meet their brands and sites unique requirements without requiring extensive technical resources.
Control the styling of every aspect of your views using the Drupal Gardens ThemeBuilder.
An Introduction to Theme Builder in Drupal Gardens:
In this demo, we'll showcase Theme Builder features in Drupal Gardens that will help you design a fantastic theme for your website. You can make awesome designs of your own choice by using them builder, which is a very easy and helpful module of Drupal Gardens.
When you registered into Drupal Gardens, you’ll requested
to select any type of website you want to built: Campaign( it is standard),
Product(it is e-commerce), Blog or create of your own choice. . The first three
site options are of specific setup related to their category. And the last one “create
your own” lets you decide everything from scratch to have it 100% personalize.
Configuring Ecommerce in your Drupal Gardens website is a
higher priority feature but yet not directly supported. There are various
third-party payment modules that you can use in your website without having to
export it. Drupal Gardens offers the capability to
import content from an existing site or from a different content management
system. Drupal Gardens does offer a single sign-on system. The same account
allows you, and also your users to access multiple sites. Furthermore, signing
into your account of Drupal Gardens, provides you the functionality to access
to a multisite management panel, in which you can see all your websites at
glance and can manage your domains.
As Drupal’s answer to other hosted platforms such as Wordpress.com and Blogger, Drupal Gardens boasts an impressive feature set compared to alternative offerings, including hosted Drupal itself.If you’re looking to build a feature rich website fast, Drupal Gardens is the way to go. 
