ProGardenTips was created to share practical gardening and landscaping knowledge based on real-world experience.
I’m Tim de Vries, the founder of ProGardenTips. Before starting this website, I spent years working professionally in landscaping and garden construction in both the Netherlands and New Zealand.
From Landscaping to ProGardenTips
I started working for a garden and landscaping company in the Netherlands when I was 18 years old.
The work was varied and very hands-on. We constructed and maintained gardens and green spaces around businesses, schools, residential developments, and public areas. I also gained experience with tree work, mowing larger areas with tractors, operating machinery, and maintaining established landscapes.
By the time I was 20, I had started my own landscaping business.
My focus shifted more toward private residential gardens, particularly garden construction and hardscaping. Much of my work involved:
- Paving and patios
- Retaining walls
- Fencing
- Pergolas and other timber structures
- Lawns
- Trees and planting
- Drainage and ground preparation
- Complete garden renovations and new garden builds
I often worked on projects from the initial groundwork through to the finished garden, which meant dealing with everything from excavation and levels to paving, planting, fencing, and lawns.
During the quieter winter months, when there was less demand for private garden work, I also worked as an excavator operator. That gave me additional experience with earthmoving, ground preparation, drainage, and working with machinery on larger projects.
In 2016, I spent six months working for a landscaping company in Christchurch, New Zealand. The role was similar to the work I had started with in the Netherlands, involving practical landscaping, garden construction, and maintenance work.
Working in New Zealand also gave me experience in a different climate and gardening environment, which broadened my perspective on how landscapes are designed, built, and maintained.
A Dutch Perspective on Gardening
Working in the Netherlands also shaped the way I think about gardens.
Gardening is taken seriously in the Netherlands. Residential plots are often relatively small, which means homeowners tend to make careful use of every square meter of outdoor space.
Gardens are commonly designed as extensions of the home rather than simply patches of lawn. Paving, planting, fencing, lighting, drainage, privacy, seating areas, and structural elements all need to work together.
There is also a strong culture of keeping gardens well maintained.
That environment taught me to look at gardening not just from the perspective of individual plants, but as a complete system: how a garden is constructed, how materials perform over time, how drainage works, how plants interact with the space, and how much maintenance a design will realistically require.
It is that practical perspective that I try to bring to ProGardenTips.
How ProGardenTips Started
In 2017, I was traveling through Southeast Asia on an extended cycling trip.
For a long time, I had wanted to build a more location-independent lifestyle. At the same time, I had accumulated years of practical landscaping knowledge that I did not want to leave behind.
Starting a gardening website seemed like a natural way to combine the two.
That is how ProGardenTips.com began.
What initially started as a way to share some of what I had learned gradually developed into a larger gardening resource.
The goal remains the same today: to publish useful, practical information that helps people make better decisions about their gardens.
What We Cover
ProGardenTips covers a broad range of gardening and landscaping topics, including:
- Garden design
- Landscaping
- Lawn care
- Trees and shrubs
- Flowers and plants
- Soil and compost
- Garden construction
- Hardscaping
- Tools and equipment
- Garden maintenance
- Pest and disease problems
- Practical DIY projects
Whenever possible, the advice on ProGardenTips is approached from a practical point of view.
A solution might look good on paper but be expensive to maintain, difficult to build, unsuitable for the soil, or likely to cause problems a few years later. Those are the kinds of considerations that professional landscaping teaches you to think about.
Practical Experience Matters
There is an enormous amount of gardening information available online.
Some of it is excellent. Some of it is repeated from one website to another without much consideration for how things actually work in a garden.
My aim with ProGardenTips is to focus on useful information grounded in practical experience, research, and common sense.
That does not mean every garden problem has one universal answer. Climate, soil, available space, budget, local plants, and personal preferences can all change what the best solution looks like.
Where those differences matter, we try to make them clear.
Our Editorial Approach
We aim to make our articles accurate, useful, and easy to understand.
Depending on the subject, our content may be based on professional landscaping experience, horticultural research, manufacturer documentation, government and university resources, or other reputable sources.
Older articles are also reviewed and updated when necessary as we continue improving the site.
You can learn more about how we research and produce our content on our Editorial Policy page.
About Tim de Vries
I founded ProGardenTips in 2017 after several years working in the landscaping industry in the Netherlands and New Zealand.
My professional experience includes garden construction and maintenance, paving, retaining walls, fencing, pergolas, lawns, planting, tree work, machinery operation, excavation, and complete residential garden projects.
Today, I continue to run and develop ProGardenTips with the same goal I had when I started it: turning practical landscaping knowledge into useful information that homeowners and gardeners can actually use.
Thanks for visiting ProGardenTips.