Tim de Vries

Tim de Vries is the founder of ProGardentips and a former professional landscaper with hands-on experience in garden construction, maintenance, and hardscaping.

Tim began working for a landscaping company in the Netherlands at 18, maintaining and constructing gardens and public green spaces while also gaining experience with tree work and machinery. At 20, he started his own landscaping business, specializing in private gardens, paving, retaining walls, fencing, pergolas, lawns, planting, and complete garden builds from start to finish.

In 2016, Tim spent six months working for a landscaping company in Christchurch, New Zealand, gaining additional experience in garden construction and maintenance in a different climate and landscaping environment.

In 2017, Tim founded ProGardenTips to share the practical knowledge he gained during his years working in the landscaping industry. Growing up and working in the Netherlands—a country with a strong culture of carefully designed and maintained residential gardens—has also shaped his practical approach to garden design, construction, and maintenance.

Multi-stem River birch clump with exfoliating cinnamon bark and golden autumn foliage in a residential garden

Trees

4 Pros And 4 Cons Of Birch Trees

Birch trees (Betula spp.) are deciduous trees grown primarily for their ornamental bark, which peels in papery layers to reveal striking underlayers of cinnamon, salmon, cream,

Seaside garden of silver foliage, sea holly and grasses growing in shingle with the sea beyond

Gardens

25 Coastal Garden Ideas for Seaside Plots

Gardening by the sea is a trade. You get light that no inland garden can match, mild winters, and a view worth every penny, and in

Sunny summer border of coneflowers, catmint and black-eyed susans with bees and a monarch butterfly feeding

Gardens

25 Pollinator Garden Ideas for Bees and Butterflies

A pollinator garden is not a special kind of garden so much as an ordinary one planted with a little more thought. The same border that

Contemporary garden with porcelain paving, a still water rill and corten steel planters

Gardens

30 Modern Garden Ideas for a Sleek Look

A modern garden is not a cold one. The best contemporary spaces are built on a few clean lines, a short list of materials, and plants

types of compost pin

Soil

Types of Compost: Which One Should You Use?

Search for “types of compost” and you get two different questions answered at once. Half the results explain composting methods — aerobic, anaerobic, vermicomposting, bokashi. The

Dry garden with agave, lavender and blue fescue around a dry stream bed of pale cobbles

Gardens

25 Drought-Tolerant Garden Ideas for Dry Climates

Summers are getting longer and hosepipe bans are getting more common, and a garden built around thirsty lawns and bedding plants starts to look like a

Herb garden of sage, flowering chives, thyme and rosemary around a small brick path

Gardens

25 Cottage Herb Garden Ideas

A cottage herb garden should feel useful before it feels decorative. You want rosemary for potatoes, mint for tea, basil for summer tomatoes, and a path

Easy-care garden of ornamental grasses, sedum and evergreen shrubs in a gravel bed

Gardens

25 Low-Maintenance Garden Ideas That Look After Themselves

A low-maintenance garden is not a bare garden. The best examples are planted with intention and structured so that the plants do the work: suppressing weeds,

Wildlife garden with a small pond, wildflower meadow, native hedge and log pile

Gardens

25 Wildlife Garden Ideas to Help Nature Thrive

A wildlife garden is the rare kind of gardening where doing less often achieves more. The messy corner you have been meaning to clear is already

companion plants for basil

Plants

Companion Plants for Basil: What Works and Why

Basil bolts faster than almost any other herb in the summer garden, and once it flowers, the leaves turn bitter and aphid pressure spikes. A few