Editorial policy

Who writes GardenDecoded

All growing guides and articles are written by the GardenDecoded editorial team. Nothing in the guidance is machine-generated and published unreviewed: every guide is drafted, checked against the sources below, and read by a person before it goes live. We are practising gardeners, not botanists — which is exactly why the botanical facts on this site come from specialist datasets rather than from us, and the growing advice comes from us rather than from a database.

We deliberately publish guidance only for plants we have worked through properly. A plant page without a growing guide says so plainly; we would rather show an honest gap than generated filler.

How guidance is researched

Before a growing guide or article is published it is checked against at least two of:

• The Royal Horticultural Society's published cultivation advice and plant trials.
• USDA PLANTS trait data (always attributed on the page when used).
• Peer-reviewed horticultural literature and reference works such as the RHS A–Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.
• Guidance from conservation bodies — the Woodland Trust, Garden Organic, the Wildlife Trusts — for native planting and wildlife value.
• Our own growing experience, which informs emphasis and practical detail but is never the sole basis for a factual claim.

Where sources disagree — hardiness at the margin, pruning timing — we say so in the text or give the cautious option. Toxicity information is only ever shown with a citation; an unsourced toxicity claim is treated as unverified and not published.

Regional assumptions

Unless a page says otherwise, guidance assumes UK conditions: RHS hardiness ratings (H1–H7), UK seasons and month names, and typical British soil and rainfall. Sunlight, watering and hardiness advice can differ materially in other climates — if you garden outside the UK, treat our timings as a starting point and adjust to your local frost dates.

Review and update process

• Every guide and article carries the date it was last reviewed.
• Published guidance is re-read when a reader reports a problem, when a cited source changes its advice, and periodically as part of routine review.
• Structured data imports (names, synonyms, images) are refreshed from their sources; each import is recorded and the source is credited on the page.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix the page itself rather than leaving an erratum nobody reads. Factual corrections are made as soon as they are verified, and the review date on the page is updated. To report an error in a plant record or an article, use the contact form — please include the page address and, if you can, a source for the correction.

Data errors that originate upstream (a wrong synonym, a misidentified photograph) are corrected on our site and, where the source provides a mechanism, reported back to it.

Advertising and independence

GardenDecoded is funded by advertising. Ads occupy defined slots around the content and are never placed inside guidance text. Advertisers have no influence over which plants we cover, what the guidance says, or how products are described. We do not publish paid-for editorial content.

Limits of our advice

GardenDecoded is an educational gardening reference. Botanical data comes from World Flora Online and GBIF; growing guidance is our own. Always check a plant's toxicity and local invasiveness status before planting, and never eat or apply a plant based on this site alone.