Collaboration

The Tended Garden grew out of a simple habit — testing plant combinations, layouts, and care routines in a real garden before writing about them. If you make, grow, sell, or design something that fits that habit, we would genuinely like to hear from you. This page explains what kinds of collaborations we welcome, the standards we hold every partnership to, and how to send us a proposal that gets read (and answered) quickly.

What Collaborations We Welcome

We work with brands, agencies, tool makers, nurseries, garden designers, and fellow content creators whose work is genuinely useful to home gardeners. We are especially interested in partners connected to vegetable gardening, flower gardening, indoor plants, garden design, plant care, and beginner gardening — the same categories our readers come to us for. That said, relevance matters more to us than size. A small nursery with a great soil blend is often a better fit than a large brand with a loosely related product.

Collaboration formats we typically consider include:

• Sponsored articles or buying guides built around a product category we would cover anyway
• Product reviews and hands-on trials of tools, seeds, planters, or garden structures
• Co-created guides with designers, landscapers, or plant experts
• Affiliate partnerships for products we can honestly recommend
• Image or resource contributions credited through our Image Credits page
• Long-term content partnerships with garden centers, seed companies, or planting apps

We are less interested in one-off link placements with no editorial value, generic guest posts unrelated to gardening, or campaigns that ask us to publish something we have not actually tried or verified.

Content Standards We Hold Every Partnership To

Every piece of content on this site, sponsored or not, is written to be genuinely useful first. If we agree to a collaboration, the resulting article still needs to read like something we would publish on our own — practical, specific, and honest about what worked and what did not. We do not accept partnerships that require us to overstate results, skip safety notes, or recommend a product we have concerns about.

Our general approach follows the same principles laid out in our Editorial Policy, and it applies to every collaboration equally, whether it involves a sponsored post, a product sample, or an ongoing affiliate arrangement.

Disclosure and Transparency

Any paid partnership, gifted product, or affiliate relationship is disclosed clearly to readers, in line with the details on our Disclosure page and, where relevant, our Affiliate Disclaimer. This is non-negotiable on our end — readers trust this site because they know when money or free products are part of the picture, and we intend to keep it that way. If a proposed collaboration requires us to hide that a post is sponsored or to remove disclosure language, we will not move forward with it.

We also ask potential partners to review our Terms of Use and Disclaimer before sending a proposal, since these outline how content, recommendations, and third-party products are handled on the site more broadly.

Who We Are, Briefly

If you are not familiar with the site yet, our About Us page is the fastest way to understand our tone, our audience, and what we prioritize when we write about gardening. It is worth a quick read before you pitch, since it will help you tailor your proposal to what actually fits here rather than sending a generic template.

How to Send a Proposal

We keep the process simple. Email us directly at [email protected] with a short, specific pitch. The proposals that move fastest usually include:

• A brief description of your brand, product, or content, and a link to see it in context
• Why it fits one of our core categories — vegetable gardening, flower gardening, indoor plants, garden design, plant care, or beginner gardening
• The type of collaboration you are proposing (sponsored post, review, guide, affiliate partnership, etc.)
• Any relevant data, past collaboration examples, or samples you can share
• Your timeline, if there is one

We read every email personally, though response times vary depending on volume, so a little patience helps. If a proposal is not the right fit, we will usually say so directly rather than leaving you waiting — we would rather be clear upfront than string anyone along.

A Few Practical Notes

We do not run link-swap arrangements, and we do not accept payment in exchange for removing disclosure or altering an honest review after publication. If your collaboration involves product samples, please be aware that any care instructions, planting advice, or safety notes we publish reflect our own testing conditions, which may differ from another gardener's climate or setup — a point also addressed in our Disclaimer. For general questions that are not proposal-related, our Contact page is the right place to reach out instead.

If what you make genuinely helps people grow something — a better seed tray, a smarter planting app, a well-designed trellis — we would like to see it. Send us the details, and let's figure out if it is a good fit.