The gardener at the other end of the phone.

01It started as chores.

Katherine grew up in a household where the garden was a family project — and the labor force was small. Her parents put her to work in the beds early: plantings, weeding, hauling, watering. 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.

"I was free child labor, more or less. I just happened to fall in love with it." — Katherine

Her first paying jobs — appropriately — were in retail floral and garden design: Plants 'N' Petals, then Central Market's floral department, then Whole Foods marketing, then Smith & Hawken. She moved into landscape operations in 2009. She is a graduate of the Texas Master Gardener program, with the formal credentials to back the instinct.

02The career.

Katherine's first paying jobs were where you'd expect, given the childhood: 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 — handling plants, working with people who cared about plants, learning 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 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, BrightView (then Greater Texas Landscapes), Davey Tree, Grow and Company, Monarch Landscape Management — moving up through supervisory, account management, division management, and branch management roles. She earned her Texas Department of Agriculture Pesticide Applicator certification in lawns, trees, and ornamentals along the way, and is a Licensed Landscape Irrigator with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

At Davey, she became the first female Branch Manager in the company's commercial landscaping division — a milestone that mattered to her less for the title than for what it represented: years of learning the industry, earning trust, and growing into larger responsibilities.

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, but his influence on the work still ran deep among the people who'd 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 deepening my understanding of the art." — Katherine

The career was never separate from the gardening. The work she does now is the same work she's been doing in one form or another since she was small enough to need help with the hose. The companies got bigger, the responsibilities got broader, the credentials accumulated — but the reason was always the same.

03How she works.

Katherine runs every project herself — site visit, proposal, scheduling, the work itself, and 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 is accountable 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.