About GardenMD

GardenMD is a practical reference site for diagnosing common garden problems, planning materials, and choosing tools only when they are genuinely useful.

The goal is simple: help gardeners slow down, check the obvious first, and avoid treating or buying for the wrong problem.

Who writes this

GardenMD is written by Sam Ellery, who spent over a decade as an environmental and geospatial data analyst for public agencies and private consulting firms — cleaning, validating, and reporting on environmental datasets, including hazardous waste and remediation data, before moving into building sites like this one.

That background doesn't make me a horticulturist, and I'm not going to pretend it does. What it does mean is that I default to the habits environmental data work requires: check the source before trusting a claim, tell an actual pattern apart from noise, and confirm the cause before treating the symptom. GardenMD applies that same discipline to garden problems, which is also why almost everything on this site links back to university extension research instead of personal opinion or folk remedies.

I've also put in real hours with my hands in soil — volunteer invasive-species removal and trail restoration work with Bay Area conservation groups. Hundreds of hours pulling weeds teaches you something, just not a substitute for professional horticultural training, which is exactly why this site leans on cited sources rather than personal authority.