Salma Akter Sweety – Co-Founder & Content Editor

I’m Salma Akter Sweety, co-founder of GrowDwell, content editor, and the person Mehedi calls when a plant starts misbehaving. Most people call me Sweety, and that’s the name you’ll see on this site. I’ve been growing plants for about six years, on our balcony and in the home courtyard, and the plants I know best are the ones I’ve grown and propagated myself: monstera, pothos, chillies, tomatoes and mint. My focus is two things most houseplant guides skim over: troubleshooting (what to do when something goes wrong) and propagation (how to turn one plant into many). I work with tropical and tropical-tolerant houseplants in apartment conditions, and I edit every guide on this site before it gets published. I also write GrowDwell’s How-To Guides and Problem-Fix articles, including container and balcony vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.

How I Got Started

I started growing houseplants seriously after my first pothos cutting rooted in a glass of water on my kitchen windowsill. It felt like a small magic trick. One plant became three, then ten, then a habit.

That habit turned into expertise the way most plant skills do: by killing things, paying attention to why, and trying again. After enough rescued root-rot cases, dropped-leaf mysteries, and successful propagations of plants people had given up on, I realized most “my plant is dying” problems come down to four or five repeatable causes. The diagnosis is usually faster than people expect. The fix is usually simpler.

When Mehedi started GrowDwell, I joined to handle the part of houseplant care most blogs ignore: the actual problem-solving.

What I Focus On

I write and edit content in two main areas:

1. Plant troubleshooting: yellowing leaves, root rot, pest problems, brown crispy tips, slow growth, and every other “what is wrong with my plant” question. The goal is to help readers diagnose accurately, not just throw fertilizer at everything.
2. Propagation: water propagation, soil propagation, leaf cuttings, division, air layering. I focus on methods that work reliably for beginners, with realistic timelines (most propagation guides skip the “this takes 6 to 8 weeks of patience” part).

I also edit every guide that goes on GrowDwell to make sure the advice is specific, the research is solid, and the writing matches what a real apartment grower needs to know.

My Editorial Process

I review in two ways. First, I check the claims against named sources (university extension pages, ASPCA, botanical gardens). Second, where it’s practical, I try the method myself on my own plants before we tell readers to do it. Then, before a guide gets published, I check it against this list:

• Does every plant recommendation include a real reason someone might NOT want it? Honest trade-offs build trust.
• Are the care instructions specific enough to act on? “Bright indirect light” is vague. “Two to four feet from a south or east window” is useful.
• Are sources named and verifiable? University extensions and ASPCA, not “experts say.”
• Does it acknowledge what does not work in apartments? Most generic plant advice assumes ideal conditions that apartment growers do not have.
• Would this help someone who has killed a plant before? Most of our readers have, including us.

If a guide cannot pass all five, it gets rewritten before it goes live.

Beyond GrowDwell

I’m the person in the household with too many empty pots and a propagation station that takes up half the windowsill. Most of my time outside of editing goes into experimenting with new propagation methods on plants that have no business being propagated that way, then writing down which ones actually worked.

Connect

My work shows up across the Indoor Plants, Balcony Garden, Garden Design, and Tips & Hacks categories: anywhere a guide needs troubleshooting depth or propagation detail. Reach out through the contact page or find GrowDwell on Pinterest at @growdwellhome. You can also follow my own plant experiments on Instagram at @salma_aktersweety.