About Us

Hi, I'm Margo — let's have a look at that yellow leaf.

Welcome to The Tended Garden, a place for people who love plants but don't need another glossy magazine telling them their garden should look like a showroom. I'm Marguerite Okafor — Margo, please — and I built this site around a simple idea I learned long before I ever worked in horticulture professionally: a garden isn't decorated or conquered. It's tended. Patiently, seasonally, and with honest expectations for what a plant, a bed, or a windowsill full of pothos can actually do.

Where This Started

I was raised in a garden in Petersburg, Virginia. My Nigerian-born father kept vegetable rows that fed our family and half the block — okra, collards, tomatoes, peppers — and a compost pile he treated like a member of the family. My American mother kept the flower beds and named her daughters after blooms; I'm Marguerite, after the daisy, and my sister is Zinnia. We've made peace with it. Mostly. My childhood job was watering, weeding, and listening, because Dad narrated the garden constantly: "See how she leans? She's asking for the sun." That kind of noticing — really looking at a plant instead of just watering it on a schedule — is the whole foundation of how I write and teach today.

What I Actually Bring To This

I'm a Master Gardener volunteer and spent 14 years working in garden centers, including six years running a plant doctor desk. In that time I diagnosed more than 10,000 plant problems — droopy fiddle leaf figs, tomato blight, root-bound everything, mystery leaf spots people photographed in a panic. I've also killed 63 plants of my own, which I mention often because it's true and because it matters: the person giving you advice should have failed enough times to know what actually goes wrong.

These days I garden on a third of an acre in Richmond, Virginia (zone 7b), with a vegetable garden, a pollinator border, and a shade garden under two old oaks I've stopped fighting. Indoors, I keep 80-plus houseplants, a patient accountant husband named Chidi, a 12-year-old son named Emeka, and an orange tabby named Basil, who is the reason nearly every houseplant guide on this site includes a pet-safety note.

What You'll Find Here

The Tended Garden covers the full range of home gardening, and every piece is written to be genuinely useful, not just inspiring to look at:

• Vegetable gardening that's honest about timing, zones, and real yields
• Flower gardening and pollinator-friendly design
• Indoor plant care, from beginner-proof picks to plant rescue
• Garden design ideas you can actually build, like the side yard layouts and stair railing planter setups we've covered in detail
• Plant care troubleshooting, straight from years at that plant doctor desk
• Beginner gardening guidance that assumes nothing and judges nothing

My Editorial Approach

I try to keep every article inspiring and practical — never one without the other. A gorgeous garden photo is worthless if the plant in it needs conditions your climate can't give it. So I write with your actual zone, actual light, and actual budget in mind, and I'm upfront about what I have and haven't tested myself. You can read more about how I research, fact-check, and update content in my Editorial Policy — I think transparency there matters as much as the advice itself.

I'm also transparent about how this site supports itself. Some posts include product recommendations or partner links, and I explain exactly how that works in my Disclosure and Affiliate Disclaimer pages. Your trust is worth more to me than any commission, so I only recommend tools and products I'd actually put in my own greenhouse.

A Note on Privacy and Community

If you're curious about how your data is handled when you visit or comment here, that's all laid out plainly in the Privacy Policy. And if you're joining the conversation in the comments or on Pinterest, I'd love to have you — you can find more of my design boards and plant care visuals on Pinterest, where I pin real layouts and rescue stories, not just staged photos.

Let's Talk Plants

Whether you've got a yellowing monstera, a side yard you don't know what to do with, or a raised bed you're planting for the first time, I want to hear about it. Reach out any time through the Contact page, or email me directly at [email protected]. I read every message, and more often than not, the questions readers send me become the next article on the site.

Thanks for being here. Now — about that yellow leaf. Let's figure out what it's trying to tell you.