PRESS / AWARDS

I am so grateful for all of the positive reviews, press mentions and award nominations over the past ten years. Here are a few of the highlights.

Awards. Honors and Top Blogger Lists
  • Better Homes and Gardens 2015 Top 5 Gardening Blogs
  • Better Homes and Gardens 2014 Top 10 Gardening Blogs
  • Horticulture Magazine – Best Gardening Blog, (2010, 2011)
  • Garden Bloggers Conference top 50 (#5)  Gardening Blogs
  • Blogrank – Top 10 Gardening Blog in all categories (ranked in top 15 since 2010)
  • The National Garden Bureau – List of Reliable of Reliable Gardening Information Sites

The 6 gardening bloggers you should be following, 
“…favorite bloggers include US blogger Matt Mattus’ Growing With Plants.”

The Telegraph, Mar. 2016
To educate himself, he sought out books from the 19th and 20th centuries — the last time the plants were grown with frequency by large staffs at grand estates — and consulted with growers and garden societies. Then he began experimenting. “I become part anthropologist, part historian, part designer, part horticulturalist,”. 



“The retro feel of Matt’s blog, Growing with Plants, brings to mind a 19th-century gardener’s almanac. It’s a treasure trove of tips on everything from growing sweet-peas stems ‘as thick as a knitting needle’.Who else has grown a patch of the Western Cape of South Africa in a snowy greenhouse half a world away?”




“One of the best escapes from the winter doldrums is reading garden blogs.  That’s what I was doing last night as the freezing rain tapped against my windows. Thankfully, I found an escape in our newest Best Gardening Blogs recipient, Growing with Plants by Matt Mattus.” 

Jenny Koester, Horticulture Magazine, Feb. 2011



Matt Mattus of Massachusetts uses his blog “Growing with Plants” to extol the virtues of rare plants and detail his amateur attempts at crossbreeding. He writes that his blog is for people who are “bored with the ordinary, and enjoy learning about new and interesting plants that you won’t see at your local garden center.” 

Kate King, CNN.com


Difficult to categorize, Mattus considers himself a mix of many things: biologist, plant collector, explorer, art director, designer, blogger, craftsman and stylist. “I’m curious about many things, but I am fascinated about the cycles and rhythms of nature,” he says. “I really don’t see much of a difference between how and why some humans create and design from the way nature does.”