A web server system is provided which includes a web garden made up of a plurality of instances of a user-mode web application. The web server includes a kernel-mode listener service that is configured to receive web requests and selectively provide the TCP/IP connections to selected instances of the user-mode web application. It does this by establishing a plurality of request queues corresponding to the number of instances of the web application logic. The web server also includes a user-mode administrative process that is configured to selectively start each of the instances of the web application and maintain the size of the resulting web garden, for example, based on a defined maximum web garden size parameter.