The gardener at the other end of the phone.

01It started as chores.

Gardens ran through both sides of Katherine's family, and growing up, they were a family project. Her parents put her to work in the beds early. Planting, weeding, hauling, watering. The labor force was small but determined, and the pay was room and board.

What was meant as chores turned into something else. She liked the rhythm of it. She liked watching a bed she'd helped plant in March come into its own by May. By the time she was old enough to opt out, she was the one volunteering.

“The pay was room and board. I fell in love with it anyway.” — Katherine

02The career.

Katherine's first paying jobs were retail floral and garden design. Plants 'N' Petals. Central Market's floral department. Whole Foods. Smith & Hawken. The work was adjacent to gardening, and it was a real apprenticeship. She handled plants, worked with people who cared about them, and learned the commercial side of an industry built around them. She completed the Texas Master Gardener program through Texas A&M AgriLife Extension in 2008. The formal credentials were catching up with the instinct.

She moved into landscape operations in 2009, starting as a Landscape Maintenance Supervisor at Southwest Property Landscaping. Over the seventeen years since, she has worked across most of the major commercial landscape companies in Houston: Landscape Management Services, Greater Texas Landscapes, Davey Tree, Grow and Company, and Monarch Landscape Management. She moved up from field supervisor and account manager to division manager, then branch manager. Along the way she earned her Texas Department of Agriculture Pesticide Applicator certification in lawns, trees, and ornamentals, and her Licensed Landscape Irrigator credential with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

At Davey, she became the first female branch manager in the company's commercial landscaping division. The milestone mattered to her less for the title than for what stood behind it: years of learning the industry, earning trust, and taking on more.

The work got further from the plants the higher she went. Budgets, headcount, contracts, renewals. She was good at it. She also nurtured African violets and orchids the entire time.

Her time at Grow and Company came after that firm's acquisition of Glauser McNair, the boutique Houston landscape practice founded by the late Danny McNair. She never worked with Danny directly. His influence reached her through the people who had been with him for years, particularly his belief that landscapes are really about people, and that you come to know people through their homes and gardens. That perspective stayed with her.

“I've spent my entire career learning how plants, gardens, and people shape one another.” — Katherine

Seventeen years in commercial landscaping taught her how large properties are built, budgeted, and maintained at scale. None of it changed what she is. A landscaper installs a place and moves on. A gardener stays, and is still answerable three summers later when the thing has either become what was promised or hasn't. Green City Gardens is the second job, done with everything the first one taught her. The companies got bigger. The responsibilities got broader. The credentials accumulated. The reason never changed.

03How she works.

Katherine runs every project herself. Site visit, proposal, scheduling, the work, the punch list at the end. As Green City Gardens grows, more of the hands-on work will pass to trusted team members, but the standard doesn't change: Katherine sees the site, signs off on the plan, and answers for what happens in your garden.

What that means for you: one phone number, one inbox, one person who knows the history of your beds. No estimator handoffs. No “I'll have to ask the crew.” If something changes mid-project, she'll tell you before the invoice does.

She is bilingual in English and Spanish, which matters when a project depends on clear communication with crews and trade partners.

04What she brings.