This page explains who writes ProGardenTips, how articles are researched and checked, how we use AI tools and images, and how the site makes money. If something here doesn’t match what you see on the site, please tell us.
Who Is Behind ProGardenTips
ProGardenTips is run by Tim de Vries, a former professional landscaper who worked in garden construction and maintenance in the Netherlands and New Zealand before founding the site in 2017. You can read more about his background on our About page.
Tim is responsible for everything published on the site, and his name is on every article.
What We Publish
We publish practical gardening content for home gardeners: garden design ideas, plant and tree guides, companion planting, plant identification and lookalikes, pros and cons of common trees and shrubs, and information about poisonous plants and stinging insects.
Most of our readers are in the United States, so plant recommendations generally use USDA hardiness zones and focus on North American species. Where advice depends on climate, soil, or region, we say so.
How Our Articles Are Made
Our content draws on three things: professional landscaping experience, research from reliable horticultural sources, and careful editing.
We use AI tools. AI helps us research topics, organize information, and write first drafts of some articles. We use it because it lets a small team cover more ground. We don’t publish AI output as it comes out, because it can be confidently wrong: it can mix up species, invent statistics, and repeat errors found elsewhere online.
That’s why every AI-assisted article is checked and edited before it is published. In practice that means:
- Checking botanical names, plant sizes, hardiness zones, bloom times, and native ranges against the sources listed below
- Removing claims we can’t verify, including unsourced statistics and “more than any other state” style superlatives
- Flagging invasive species instead of recommending them, and noting when a plant is toxic to people or pets
- Adding practical guidance based on how things actually work in a real garden
Tim reviews and approves every article before it goes live.
Sources We Rely On
For factual information, we give the most weight to:
- University extension services, such as those from land-grant universities in the U.S.
- Government agencies, including the USDA, the U.S. Forest Service, and state departments of agriculture and natural resources
- Botanical gardens and horticultural societies, such as the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Royal Horticultural Society
- Poison control and public health sources for anything related to toxic plants or insects
- Manufacturer documentation for tools, materials, and products
We avoid relying on other gardening blogs for facts. Much gardening information online is copied from site to site, errors included. Where an article depends on a specific source, we link to it.
Images
We use two kinds of images:
- Photographs of real plants, trees, and insects. e.g. our own photos, licensed stock, or Creative Commons images. When a photo is meant to help you identify something, we check that it actually shows the species named in the caption. If we don’t have a reliable photo, we leave the image out rather than use the wrong one.
- AI-generated illustrations, mainly as featured images on garden design and ideas articles. These show a style or a mood, not a specific real garden, and we never use them to identify a plant, insect, or problem.
Safety Information
Some of our articles cover poisonous plants, stinging insects, and pest control. This information is for general education and plant identification. It is not medical or veterinary advice.
- If a person may have eaten a poisonous plant, call Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222 (U.S.) or your local emergency number.
- If a pet may be affected, contact your veterinarian or an animal poison control service right away.
- Never eat a wild plant based on an online identification alone.
- When using any pesticide or herbicide, follow the product label. The label is the legal standard.
Keeping Content Up to Date
Gardening advice changes as new varieties are released, plant diseases spread, and species are reclassified as invasive. We review older articles and update or remove them when they no longer meet our standards.
In 2026 we reviewed the entire site. We removed well over a thousand older pages that were thin, outdated, or not useful enough, and we rewrote or fact-checked many of the articles we kept. Those reviews turned up real errors in older content, including wrong botanical names, impossible plant sizes, and invasive plants presented as good choices. We corrected them.
Corrections
If you spot an error, please let us know through our contact page. Include the article and what you believe is wrong, with a source if you have one. We review every correction request and fix confirmed errors promptly.
How We Make Money
ProGardenTips is free to read and is supported in two ways:
- Display advertising. Ads on the site are managed by an ad network. We don’t choose individual ads, and advertisers have no influence over what we write.
- Affiliate links. Some articles may link to products on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. See our disclaimer for details.
We don’t accept payment for coverage, and we don’t publish sponsored posts.
Questions
If you have questions about this policy or about how a specific article was put together, please get in touch.