Editorial Policy

I'm Margo Okafor, and before anything else, this policy is my word to you: everything published on The Tended Garden has either been grown, killed, diagnosed, or troubleshot by me — or it's clearly labeled as something else. You can read more about how I got here on About Us, but the short version is fourteen years in garden centers, six of them running a plant doctor desk, and a home garden in Richmond that I treat like an ongoing experiment. This page explains how that experience actually turns into the articles you read.

Our Mission

The Tended Garden exists to make gardening feel less like a performance and more like a relationship — one with good weeks and bad ones. I write for people growing vegetables in unpredictable zones, nursing a fiddle-leaf fig through its third dramatic leaf drop, or trying to figure out what to do with an awkward side yard. My goal isn't to sell you a fantasy garden. It's to tell you honestly what worked, what didn't, and what I'd do differently — the same way I used to talk to customers across the plant doctor counter.

How Content Is Chosen

Topics come from real questions — mine, my family's, and the ones I answered thousands of times at the garden center. If a post covers something like stair railing planters or side yard redesigns, it's because I've either built it in my own zone 7b backyard or diagnosed the exact problem it solves. I lean toward subjects with genuine seasonal relevance to vegetable gardening, flower gardening, indoor plants, garden design, and plant care — not whatever's trending for a week and forgotten. If a topic doesn't hold up past one season, I don't publish it.

How Articles Are Researched and Reviewed

Every guide starts with what I've done firsthand — in my own garden, or across the roughly 10,000 plant problems I worked through at the doctor desk. Where a topic falls outside my direct experience, I cross-check against extension office publications, Master Gardener training materials, and other credentialed horticultural sources before writing a word. Draft articles get a second read specifically for accuracy: Latin names, hardiness zones, timing, and any care instructions that could actually harm a plant or a gardener if I got them wrong. I'd rather delay a post than publish something I haven't verified.

Product Recommendations

I only recommend tools, soil mixes, pots, and products I've personally used or tested against ones I have. If I haven't tried something, I say so plainly rather than pretending otherwise. Some links on this site are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. That never changes which product I recommend first; it just means I get compensated after the fact for an honest opinion. Full detail on how this works lives in our Affiliate Disclaimer and general Disclosure page, and I'd genuinely encourage you to read both before assuming any post is sponsored.

Advertising and Partnerships

The Tended Garden runs ads and occasionally partners with brands relevant to gardening — but partnered content is always labeled clearly, and it's never allowed to override my actual experience with a product. If a brand sends me something and it underperforms, that's what I write. Details on how ads, sponsorships, and data are handled sit in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. If you're a brand or fellow gardener interested in working together, the Collaboration page explains how I evaluate those requests.

Corrections

Plants don't read the textbooks, and neither do I get everything right the first time. If you spot an error — a wrong hardiness zone, an outdated product, a step that didn't work in your garden — I want to know. Email me directly at [email protected] with the article title and what you noticed. Verified corrections get fixed promptly, and for anything substantial, I note the update at the bottom of the post rather than quietly editing it away. I'd rather be corrected in public than be wrong in silence.

Community Comments and Moderation

I love a good comment-section debate about tomato varieties as much as anyone, but this is a space for gardeners helping gardeners, not a free-for-all. Comments are moderated for spam, hostility, and anything unrelated to the post at hand. Our full expectations for how we treat each other here are laid out in the Community Guidelines, and I read that page the same way I read my own writing standards — as something I'm holding myself to, not just visitors.

Sourcing Images and Third-Party Content

Photos used across the site are sourced with attention to licensing and credit, detailed on our Image Credits page. If you've found this site through Pinterest, our Pinterest Disclaimer covers how pins and saved images relate to the original articles here — I'm active there myself, sharing garden design boards under The Tended Garden on Pinterest.

A Few Legal Basics

Because gardening advice touches everything from ladders to pesticides to what's safe around pets and kids, our Disclaimer and Terms of Use spell out the boundaries of the advice given here — useful reading if you're ever unsure whether a guide applies to your specific situation. When in doubt about anything on this site, or if something just doesn't sit right, reach out. I answer my own email, and I'd rather hear from you than have you leave with a question unanswered.