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How We Work

Last updated: May 2026 · Author: Eleanor B., Lead Editor

Most editorial sites do not publish their workflow. We do, because the workflow is a quality signal — if a publication will not tell you what stands between an idea and a published article, the answer is usually “not very much.”

Every long-form guide on Explore Your Garden moves through five stages before it goes live. Tool reviews and product tests follow a longer version of the same path because hands-on testing is its own discipline. Shorter pieces follow a compressed version. There is no automated pipeline, no AI generating drafts, and no rotating freelance pool. Three working gardeners and one publisher, working through five stages, every time.

Stage 1 — Garden testing or research

Before anyone writes anything, the team member assigned to the article does the underlying work. For a plant guide, this means having grown the plant. For a tool review, this means having used the tool across at least one full growing season for seasonal products or at least 60 days of consistent use for general tools. For a how-to guide, this means having performed the practice on multiple occasions and observed the failure modes.

This stage takes weeks at minimum. For long-running tests — perennial plants, multi-season tool comparisons, soil-amendment trials — it can take more than a year. We are willing to publish slowly because the alternative is publishing wrongly.

Notes are kept throughout. Photographs are taken throughout. The notes and photographs are not yet a draft.

Stage 2 — Outline and angle

Before drafting begins, the writer produces a one-page outline that includes: what the article will help the reader do, what assumptions it makes about the reader’s starting point, what the headline practical takeaways are, and what the reader should walk away with if they read only the introduction and conclusion.

The outline is shared with at least one other team member before drafting begins. This step catches articles that are repeating points already covered elsewhere on the site, articles whose practical advice is too specific to one climate to be useful as written, and articles whose angle does not yet repay reader attention. If the outline does not survive review, the article is not written until the angle is sharper.

Stage 3 — Drafting

The first draft is written from the outline by the assigned writer. We aim for clean first drafts within a week of outline approval for short and medium pieces, longer for major features and seasonal calendars.

Drafts are written by humans. We use AI tools for narrow operational tasks (translation help on Latin botanical names, organizing personal notes into outline form) and never for editorial drafting. The complete position is on our AI Usage Policy.

Photographs are organized alongside the draft. We use our own photography wherever possible and prefer it strongly over stock imagery. Photographs from outside our gardens are credited and licensed.

Stage 4 — Editing and fact-checking

Every long-form article is edited by at least one team member other than the writer. The editor’s responsibilities are threefold: line editing for clarity and economy, structural editing for argument and pacing, and a fact-check pass on every concrete claim in the article.

Fact-checking on Explore Your Garden means going back to the source material and confirming each claim. If a guide says “tomato plants typically take 60–80 days from transplant to first harvest,” the editor confirms this against multiple authoritative sources, not just the original writer’s recollection. If a feature describes a particular plant’s hardiness as zone 6–9, the editor confirms this against the RHS database, the USDA hardiness map, and our own test-garden experience.

This stage is also where conflicts of interest are surfaced if they have not already been declared. The editor asks the writer: have you been provided this product for free by the manufacturer? Do you have any financial relationship with the brand? Is there any reason a reader would reasonably expect to know about your relationship with the subject? Anything yes goes into the disclosure block at the top of the article.

Stage 5 — Publication and post-publication

Publication is the visible part. What matters more is what happens afterward.

Every article is open to corrections. Reader emails identifying errors are taken seriously and acted on quickly. Corrections are logged at the bottom of the article with the date and a description of what was changed; we do not silently revise. Our complete Corrections Policy describes the process in detail.

We also revisit major guides at least annually. Plant cultivar information ages quickly — recommended varieties change, new pest pressures emerge, climate shifts alter what works in a given zone. When we revisit an article, the original publication date and the revision date are both shown, with a note describing the substantive changes.

Tool and product reviews — the longer version

Tool and product reviews follow a more demanding version of the same workflow. Specifically:

Test period of at least 60 days for general garden tools, at least one full growing season for seasonal products (seeds, plants, fertilizers).
Real-conditions use — the product is used in actual garden work, not bench-tested in artificial conditions. Comparisons to alternative products are conducted in equivalent conditions.
Documented results — photographs of the product in use, of failures and successes, of the actual garden work being completed. Notes are dated.
Cost transparency — whether the product was purchased, supplied by the manufacturer, or borrowed is disclosed in the article.
Editor verification — another team member reviews the testing notes before the review is drafted.

The full framework is on the Product Review Policy and the underlying methodology is on How We Test.

Photography

Wherever possible, the photographs in an article are taken by the writer in their own garden. Photographs of the actual subject of the guide — the plant being grown, the tool being used, the technique being demonstrated — are preferred over stock imagery and almost always available because we test what we write about.

Where stock imagery is necessary (a plant we have not yet grown locally, a historical reference), we use clearly licensed sources and credit them.

What this all costs

Producing a major plant guide takes 25–50 hours of work between writer and editor, on top of the underlying testing time which can stretch over months or years. A long tool review takes 60+ hours over a season, including all the actual using-the-tool time. We publish less than larger sites because we cannot move faster without abandoning these standards, and we will not.

Reader-supported revenue (display advertising, occasional affiliate links disclosed per the Affiliate Disclosure) covers the operational costs. The editorial labor is done by gardeners who do this work because they care about the subject.

The audit trail

For every long-form article, we keep an internal record of: the original outline, the testing notes, the editor assigned, the fact-check pass, and any post-publication corrections. We do not publish this record (it would be enormous and unreadable), but it exists. We are willing to share specific records with serious inquirers for legitimate reasons — researchers studying gardening media, journalists investigating editorial practices, brands concerned about a specific review.

This is what editorial accountability looks like in practice. Documented process, applied consistently, written down where readers can hold us to it.