Posts By

Katherine Rowe

Katherine is a garden professional with a background in design, conservation, and public horticulture. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture and a love of gardens, parks, and natural lands alike. Katherine enjoys exploring gardens and wild spaces through work and travel and designing gardens with nature at the helm.

A close-up of dark brown, crumbly material being scooped with a trowel.

Soil Improvement

5 Reasons To Try Peat-Free Soil Mix This Season

Peat-free soil mixes are becoming more readily available to improve soil health and lessen dependence on a renewable resource. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores reasons to look for peat-free alternatives to incorporate in seeding, containers, and beds this growing season.

Dense clusters of Thymus leaves, small and green, growing in a wooden container.

Gardening Inspiration

13 Herbs to Grow From Seed in January for Spring Harvests

In moderate climates, late January is prime for starting select herbs from seed indoors, and cold climate growers benefit from winter sowing. Seed starting gives seedlings a headstart on healthy roots and leafy growth for a harvest that begins in spring. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores herbs to start this month relative to your climate’s frost date and garden plans.

Bright scarlet flowers with a satiny finish bloom on slender, upright stems with narrow green leaves, ideal for a sunny garden and perfect for beginner flower seeds.

Flowers

17 Best Beginner Flowers to Grow From Seed

Late winter is ideal for seed sourcing, with our sights on a florific warm season. With easy-to-sow and grow selections, the blooms abound without intensive seedling management or the need for extensive seed-starting supplies. Explore easy flowers to grow from seed with garden expert Katherine Rowe to kick off spring in bloom.

Ripe seed capsules of the foxglove plant are elongated, dry, and split open, ready to reseed.

Ornamental Gardens

Will Foxgloves Reseed in the Garden?

Foxgloves are striking ornamentals with tall bloom spikes and bold vertical interest. They draw pollinators with their early bell blooms, graceful on strong stems. A durable nature belies their delicate appeal. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores how to manage the vigorous seed producers to balance perennialization.

A woman holding a potted rosemary plant with green needle-like leaves, alongside a wicker basket containing another plant.

Gardening Inspiration

Are Local Nurseries Dying? What it Means For Gardeners

Local garden centers are a community hub of knowledge, resources, and healthy plants suited to our growing areas. With a resurgence in gardening and more of us growing, now is the time for access to sound information and good supplies. Explore the merits of local nurseries and how to create well-rounded garden systems with gardening expert Katherine Rowe.

Small lettuce seedlings growing in soil-filled compartments of a clear plastic container, with plant markers labeled for identification.

Seeds

9 Pros and Cons of Winter Sowing

Considering winter sowing to simplify seed-starting this season? Now is the time to get going. The easy and rewarding method is full of advantages and yields sturdy seedlings. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores the merits and potential variables of winter sowing.

Vegetable garden layout plan featuring above-ground and raised beds, showcasing a variety of crops such as beets, lettuce, corn, celery, radishes, dill, potatoes, and more.

Vegetables

11 Vegetable Garden Layout Plans to Try This Year

As we dream up our spring gardens this season, it’s a great time to evaluate and create the layout plan. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe explores inspirations for designing our vegetable gardens now to get going with the growing season in sight.

Wooden raised planters filled with lush green leafy plants, surrounded by gravel paths.

Gardening Tips

Planning Your Spring Vegetable Garden: 9 Pro Tips

It’s exciting to spend a little time this winter dreaming up the warm-season garden. Planning now saves time and effort during the main growing season, and it sets up the foundation for healthy, productive plants. Garden expert Katherine Rowe offers tips for planning a rewarding spring garden with the season in sight.

Close-up of white Helleborus flowers with five smooth petals, a pale yellow-green center, and fine stamens.

Flowers

5 Common Hellebore Diseases: ID and Treatment

In addition to their lovely late winter blooms and handsome foliage, hellebores are relatively carefree perennials. While usually problem-free, they are susceptible to certain diseases, some recoverable and some serious. Join gardening expert Katherine Rowe in a look at common diseases for hellebores and how to treat and prevent them.

Close-up of small plant seedlings with oval, jagged, bright green leaves sprouting from seeds in soil blocks.

Seeds

15 Best Seeds to Start in Soil Blocks This Year

Soil blocking is a productive seed-starting method that suits most ornamental and edible annuals and perennials. As the soil becomes both the growing media and the “pot,” healthy roots move easily to the garden at transplanting. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe explores dynamic varieties for seed blocking this year.

Close-up of winter sowing supplies, featuring a row of white plastic milk jugs repurposed as seed containers, arranged against the wall of a house in a snowy winter garden with patches of green grass.

Seeds

5 Essential Winter Sowing Supplies and Equipment

Now is the time for winter sowing - an easy, resourceful, rewarding way to start seeds working with nature. Using simple containers for homemade “greenhouses,” strong seedlings emerge, ready for transplanting. With a few essentials and repurposed household supplies, we’ll be on our way to (nearly) effortless seed-starting. Join gardening expert Katherine Rowe in all that’s needed for this streamlined approach to seeding.