Gardeners Can Work from Home (Yes, Really!)
You might think that gardening is one of those jobs where you have to be on site, toiling and tilling under the hot sun all day. But you can actually put your gardening experience to work without ever having to go onsite to another person's garden.
If you're looking for a fully remote job you can do on the side—maybe you're a busy parent or the primary caregiver for a loved one—then garden consulting is a great option for you.
When I first became a garden consultant, I did a hybrid of working at clients' homes while my youngest was in preschool and then working from home once I picked her up at noon. It was such a relief to find a job that offered me so much flexibility in both hours and location while my children were young.
I've trained another consultant, Stacey Messina of Seed and Trellis in San Diego, CA, who works fully from home so she can take care of her little ones. She meets with her clients virtually in the mornings and then finishes up her garden designs before her kids come home from school.
Let's look at three different things you can do while working from home.
Work from Home Side Jobs for Gardeners:
- Make planting plans
- Create garden planners
- Produce garden designs
Make Planting Plans
From the comfort of your home, you can easily whip up custom planting plans for your customer's garden. Most experienced gardeners can make planting plans for each season in their sleep, so it's really just a matter of getting them on paper (or screen).
In order to create each plan, you'll need to know the measurements of their raised beds, as well as what growing seasons they experience in their climate. I also like to survey the customer to figure out which herbs and veggies they use most in their kitchen so I can tailor the plan for what they'll actually enjoy after harvest.
If you have any kind of artistic ability, you can make these planting plans with water colors or paint. I'm not great at drawing, so I used my kids' colored pencils to draw circles to represent veggies for my first planting plans. After that, I switched to designing planting plans on my computer.
The important thing is that your planting plans are to scale and have a key so that you customer knows exactly what to plant where.
Planting plans are immensely helpful to inexperienced gardeners and those new to a certain gardening climate. As someone who's moved around a lot and struggled to figure out what I could grow each month in a different zone, I can attest that a simple planting plan is a great starting point.
You can charge up to $100 per planting plan, as long as it's custom to the gardener's space and plant priorities. You'll typically spend about 1 to 2 hours on each planting plan, so you're looking at a great rate for every hour you work. You could also create a more general planting plan for your area and sell it to more customers but for a much lower price, maybe about $10 to $20.
Create a Garden Planner
Another product you can create from your couch would be a garden planner for gardeners in your town. This planner would walk beginner gardeners through how to plan out the year in their garden based on your local knowledge. You'd include important planting dates based on the first and last anticipated frosts in your area and anything else important for your specific climate.
Your garden planner could also include things like a habit tracker, monthly tending tips, and monthly planting guides.
I created a garden planner for local gardeners called "52 Harvests a Year". It walks my clients through an entire year in the garden here in Nashville and helps them plan out their harvests in their own gardens.
There are so many free online graphic design tools like Canva out there, so products like this are really easy to create once you've got all the relevant information organized.
This type of planner might take anywhere from 5 to 15 hours to create, but then you have a template for next year ready to go. You can sell each one for about $25. Every planner you sell is straight profit, and you just deliver them as PDFs via email. Of course, you could always have them printed and bound for your customers, and then your profit margin will be a little smaller.
Produce Garden Designs
The last product you can easily create from home is a custom garden design for a customer who would like to start a garden. For each design, you'll need to get the precise measurements of potential garden locations. I recommend requesting pictures of their home exterior and outdoor space.
You'll also want to chat with them (via email or Zoom meeting) about things like their design preferences, how much gardening space they'll be able to tend each week, their installation budget, etc. That way, you have a strong sense of the client's expectations going into the design.
Once you've gathered all the information needed, you'll come up with design options that would work in the space available. You might send these to the client for feedback and then deliver a final design to them. In addition to being fully to scale with all measurements clearly marked, you'll also include a list of recommended materials to use that would fit within the client's budget.
Creating a garden design is much more advanced than a planting plan. While you could draw the gardens to scale if you're an artist, I recommend using a computer software like SketchUp. (I teach my students how to create professional-quality designs with SketchUp in the Gardenary Consultant Certification program.)
Because this is a next-level product, you get to charge more. Your starting price should be at least $200 per design. (We have seasoned garden consultants who charge upwards of $500 per design!) Expect to spend about 3 hours creating a well-rendered design.
Do Meaningful Work Without Ever Having to Leave Your House
Imagine lounging in your jammies and helping someone learn how to garden at the same time. Imagine popping outside to your own garden to harvest something for lunch in between creating a beautiful design for a brand-new garden. Dream job?
I sure think so. When I first started garden consulting, I realized I'd stumbled upon the most incredible job—one that could be done as a full-time career or side hustle, one that lets you set your own hours, one that lets you work from home as much as needed. (Of course, if you want to meet clients at their homes and do garden installations, you totally can!)
I knew I couldn't gatekeep this kind of opportunity; I had to share it with other gardeners. So I created the Gardenary Consultant Certification program to teach what I know about starting a garden consulting business to other gardeners who might be interested in creating a business like mine.
If you're interested in growing your own business from home while working part time, consider becoming a gardening consultant. You can really make this job work for you and your family, and we'd love to help you get started today!
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