The Spruce Gardening and Plant Care Review Board

Meet our Review Board members and learn more about our process

In This Article

Who Is on the Board?
Which Topics Are Reviewed?
Article Life Cycle
How Do I Know if an Article Was Reviewed?
We Appreciate Your Feedback

Whether you are seeking tips for a lush lawn, worried about your ailing houseplant, or are a seasoned gardener looking for new ideas, you want an accurate and reliable resource that will give you the answers you need, when you need them. We know that finding trustworthy gardening advice online can be difficult—the internet is full of misinformation or personal opinion masquerading as fact. All too often, plants are misidentified, and care guides aren’t as in-depth as they should be. To help gardening enthusiasts everywhere, we launched The Spruce Gardening and Plant Care Review Board, comprised of Master Gardeners and professional landscapers. Our goal is to provide you with well-researched, fact-checked information vetted by gardening experts with nearly 50 years combined experience.

Who Is on the Board?

Our Gardening Review Board is comprised of accredited Master Gardeners and landscapers with decades of education and hands-on experience. These professionals boast a wide variety of specialties including horticulture, composting, beekeeping, landscaping and garden design, organic vegetable gardening, permaculture, pests and plant diseases, and more. These members have been hand-picked based on their impressive backgrounds, extensive botanical knowledge, and ability to communicate sometimes difficult or dense concepts to a broad audience.

Barbara Gillette

Master Gardener

Barbara Gillette is a Master Gardener, Herbalist, beekeeper, and journalist with three decades of experience propagating and growing fruits, vegetables, herbs, and ornamentals. From sowing seed to harvest, from heirloom tomatoes to wild orchids, her gardening experience encompasses first hand knowledge of best practices for success.

She has worked with the University of Kentucky Department of Agricultural Communications and with several commercial greenhouse operations and was past president of the Anderson County Farmer's Market Cooperative. She has cultivated and planted more than 150 shrubs and trees on her eight acre property over the past 23 years.

Amanda Rose Newton

Board Certified Entomologist

Amanda Rose Newton is a pest specialist, reviewing pest control content for The Spruce's Cleaning Review Board. She is a board-certified entomologist and volunteers for USAIDs Farmer to Farmer program. Currently, she is a professor of Horticulture, an Education Specialist, and pest specialist.She has a decade's worth of experience in both the academic and professional sides of horticulture and entomology. Her focus is on educating gardeners to use sustainable practices that will lead to improved food security and quality for the next generation.

Julie Thompson-Adolf

Master Gardener

Julie Thompson-Adolf is a Master Gardener and author with over 30 years of experience with year-round organic gardening, seed starting and saving, growing heirloom plants, perennials, and annuals, and sustainable and urban farming.

She’s a Master Gardener, served on the National Garden Bureau’s Plant Nerds team, and joined with television host P. Allen Smith for Garden2Blog. Julie is a member of Garden Comm: Garden Communicators International, Slow Food, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, and many other environmental and gardening groups.

Kathleen Miller

Master Gardener & Horticulturist

Kathleen Miller is a highly-regarded Master Gardener and horticulturist with over 30 years of experience in organic gardening, farming, and landscape design. She founded Gaia's Farm and Gardens, a working sustainable permaculture farm, and writes for Gaia Grows, a local newspaper column. She has taught people from all over the world how to garden, and she appears as a regular guest on radio shows, films, and at other events around the country. Her passion is sharing her expansive knowledge and experience in horticulture, agriculture, sustainable farming systems, and organic gardening.

Debra LaGattuta

Master Gardener

Debra is a Master Gardener who received her official title in 2015. She has over 30+ years of experience as a home gardener experienced in designing, planting, and maintaining cottage-style perennial, vegetable, and four-season container gardens.

She is the lead gardener in a Plant-A-Row, which is a program that offers thousands of pounds of organically-grown vegetables to local food banks. She is also the author of several gardening presentations on topics including perennial plant primers, hardy perennials for different zones, and vegetable gardening.

Andrew Hughes

Certified Arborist

Andrew Hughes is a certified arborist, member of the International Society of Arborists specializing in tree heal care, and reviews tree content on The Spruce's Gardening Review Board. He founded and runs Urban Loggers, LLC, a company offering residential tree services in the Midwest and Connecticut.

Mary Marlowe Leverette

Master Gardener

Mary has been a Master Gardener for 30+ years and a commercial and residential gardener. She is a former Clemson University Extension Agent. She worked to develop the Riverbanks Botanical Garden that opened in 1995.

Along with her brother, Mary owns Marlowe Farms Apple Orchards and has 50+ years of experience in vegetables, annuals, and perennials in the home garden as well as commercial crops.

Which Topics Are Reviewed?

Our editors work in tandem with our review board to fact-check and formalize our robust library of gardening and landscaping articles that cover topics like plant pests and diseases, techniques like propagating and pruning, landscape design, general plant care, and so much more. Our review board assesses the foundational information you need about all things landscaping and gardening as well as the step-by-step tutorials that will take your outdoor space to the next level. Your yard and garden are important facets of your home, and we want to help you feel proud of them.

The Life Cycle of an Article

Each article is written by one of our garden and landscaping experts, who have years of hands-on experience in their respective topics. Next, our editorial team assigns the article to the appropriate Gardening Review Board member, based on their expertise. Our reviewers read each article thoroughly, fact-checking and making edits for accuracy, relevancy, and overall helpfulness to the reader. They pass the reviewed article back to our editorial team to read through for grammar, style, and reading comprehension. Finally, the updated article is published and receives an official stamp indicating that it has been reviewed by a member of our Gardening Review Board. Our review board members’ extensive training and experience paired with our editorial know-how come together to give you the answers you need in a format that is easy to understand.

Fact Checking

Articles that undergo review by our Gardening Review Board receive thorough fact checking. They are tasked with researching all statements of fact to ensure that information presented in our articles is accurate and comprehensive, statistics are properly sourced, cited, and up to date.

To learn more, please see our full Editorial Policy and Standards page.

Gardening review board life cycle illustration — The Spruce / Catherine Song

How Do I Know if an Article Was Reviewed?

You may notice a badge appearing at the top of some content pages. The badge signifies that a board member has reviewed and edited the article, taking special care to confirm that the information presented is both accurate and up-to-date.

Our badge shows that an article has been reviewed — The Spruce

The Spruce’s Promise to You

Our team of editors and review board members strive to vet all on-site information to ensure it is as accurate and relevant as possible. And when we don’t immediately have the answer, we promise that we will research, test, and fact-check until we do. We believe in arming our readers with all available information so that you can make the best decision for your outdoor space and garden.

We Appreciate Your Feedback

We are here to serve you, and we strive to provide the very best experience. If you think we could be doing better, we want to hear all about it.

If you have any questions about the relevancy or accuracy of any on-site articles, or about our gardening review process, please email us at contact@thespruce.com.