Can You Really Charge People Money to Learn How to Garden from You?

Here's something that hundreds of gardeners have told me over the past eight years when I start talking about garden consulting: "I could never charge someone money to teach them how to garden," they say. "I give my gardening advice for free."

Giving away advice for free is a noble thing to do, but I have a reply for those gardeners who feel compelled to do so: "Those who pay, pay attention." I've found this to be true for my kids, for the people I observe, and for myself. I don't know about you, but I treat things that were free totally different than the things I had to save up for and purchase. I give things I've paid my hard-earned cash for way more of my time and attention.

And the same is true for learning about the garden. Yes, people can get lots of information on YouTube and Google even the Gardenary blog for free. And maybe they can get help from other gardeners in their community for free. But the people who go out and hire an expert—someone who knows their climate and what grows best there each season—to help them in their garden, those people are the ones who will pay the most attention. They are, therefore, the ones who'll have the most success.

So you can can absolutely give away your gardening knowledge for free, but at the end of the day, we all have bills to pay, right? Garden consulting is a wonderful way to make a living or earn a little extra money on the side. Here's why your gardening knowledge is worth your client's money.

Reason Number One: You Have Expertise

You have every right to charge for the knowledge and experience you built by gardening up to this point.

Even if you're only a couple seasons ahead of them in the garden, people will pay you to share what you've learned with them. By doing so, you pull them ahead several seasons. Think of all the mistakes you made that they can now avoid, the lessons you've learned that they can now benefit from. You can help them move from a complete novice to a more experienced gardener in a fraction of the time it took you to make the same journey.

Now you may be thinking, "Oh my gosh, I've got so much more to learn in the garden before I can call myself an 'expert'." But here's the thing: Your clients don't need you to know everything in the garden. They just need you to know more than they do.

Think about high school. The seniors think they're so cool and in charge of the entire school, but they're not much use to the freshman class. The seniors are too far removed from the experience of being a newbie. They've long forgotten how hard it is to be a freshman. The sophomores are in a way better position to help and offer advice. They've had an entire year of high school already—they know the ropes—but they still remember the hard parts of being freshmen.

The same is true for the garden. The best teachers are not necessarily the gardeners with PhDs in horticulture or even the master gardeners. The best teachers are typically the ones who've been gardening for a couple years and can speak to brand new gardeners on their level.

Reason Number Two: You Can Help Them Buy Things That Will Work for Them

In addition to your expertise, people will pay you to help them select the best products for their situation.

Where do you go when you're considering buying a new piece of furniture or a novel? The reviews. You want to know what others think before you add to your cart. The same is true for all the things your clients are thinking about buying for their garden—from large structures like raised beds and trellises to the best kind of soil.

Researching things like the best nurseries to buy from and the best materials to use takes time and a lot of scrolling. Busy people will skip that research and buy things that end up being a total waste of their money. Or they won't buy anything at all and never move forward with their gardening goals because they're too overwhelmed by all the choices available to them. 

This is where your expertise comes in. This is one of the reasons you're worth every penny you charge as a garden consultant.

When I went on my first consultations as a garden business owner, I would recommend my clients buy things like raised beds and trellises. They would reply with "Well, what size trellis is best for peas?" and "Which beds do you recommend?" Telling them what to do wasn't enough. They wanted to know exactly what I would order. In many cases, they wanted me to order it for them.

Your client knows you're more likely to buy the exact right thing from them and that you've curated favorite products over the years.

Reason Number Three: You Can Design Their Space for Them

You might already be saying, "Nicole, I am not a garden designer. I just put some plants into my raised beds."

But believe it or not, putting plant combinations that you like in your raised beds is garden design. You're creating art inside those planting beds. And your clients will pay you to help them do that, as well.

Most new gardeners are terrified they're going to put the wrong plants together and mess their entire garden up. They're happy to pay to know what plant combinations would work in their garden for each growing season in their climate. You can provide planting plans for each season for your more DIY clients. Other clients might like you to actually plant up the garden for them following the plan you've created.

If you're feeling ready for it, you can take the next step and tell clients without gardens where to put their garden based on their landscape. You can help them figure out the best garden layout and materials to align with the elements that already exist in their space.

This is a skill you can develop if you don't already have it; it's certainly something people will pay you to help them with. A lot of my clients are terrified of their gardens ending up looking like awkward boxes in the middle of their yard. They'd much rather pay me to design the garden for them than end up with something U-G-L-Y.

You don't have to be a landscape designer. You don't have to claim to be anything that you're not. But your assessment of where the garden should go and how it should be constructed is probably a lot better than the client's after you've been growing in your own space for a number of years.

Reason Number Four: You Can Oversee Their Garden Installation

If your client would like to put in a new garden space as a result of their consultation with you, they will pay you to oversee the installation for them. Some clients will want to do the work themselves, others might want to hire someone else to install it for them, and others will ask you to do the installation. There are different levels of service that you can offer, but the thing you should always provide—and charge for—is oversight.

No matter who's doing the installation, your oversight is essential. If you've ever supervised a project before, you know it's hard work. You need to be on-site to ensure every piece gets delivered, every component is installed correctly, and the space ends up being what it should be. People pay wedding coordinators for the same kind of work, right? It makes sense for them to seek direction for their garden installation, as well.

Reason Number Five: You Can Provide Ongoing Coaching & Instruction

When you begin working with a client, you can give them an overview of what the garden might look like each season in your town. The beauty of the garden's dynamic nature is that it creates a ready-made subscription service for a garden consultant. You and I both know the garden is very different from your landscape. It's not just a couple boxwoods sitting there, doing their thing all year long. The kitchen garden changes from week to week, sometimes even day to day.

That means you can provide ongoing coaching sessions and even ongoing maintenance services. Your client is not just willing to pay you in the beginning; many are willing to continue to pay you to guide them through every single week or month or quarter to come.

I hope by now you're realizing that you have a lot more to offer than you thought you did! Let's look now at how much you can charge for your services.

How Much to Charge for a Garden Consultation

When I first started my garden consulting business, I sold myself way too short. My price for an hour-long garden consultation back in 2015 was only $25. To me, getting paid at all to get to talk to people about gardening was a win. Demand for my services quickly rose so much though that I had to raise my price.

If you're in the US, $100 for a one-hour consultation is a good baseline. This covers your travel time to the client's home, the hour you'll spend with them, and any work you'll do to follow up with them.

How Much to Charge for Garden Coaching Sessions

Coaching sessions are shorter than consultations and can start at $50 per session, but you could charge as much as $75 or $100. The price will vary based on where you live and the level of your clientele (whether they're more DIYers or people used to paying for services).

How Much to Charge for Selecting Items for the Garden

Once you've charged for a consultation or coaching session, then the real fun begins. You can add on charges for doing the design, for overseeing the installation, and for selecting materials for the garden. There's a way that you get to make a little bit more money as a garden consultant on every one of those items.

Let's say you're selecting a raised bed or a trellis for a client. You can buy those products at a wholesale price once you start your business. Then, you charge the client the retail price. You could even add a selector's or designer's fee on top of that price.

The same goes for overseeing an installation. You would pay whoever is doing the labor, and then you'd charge a little bit more to cover your time to manage the project.

You basically get to charge a little bit more for your time to curate and supervise every aspect of the garden.

The Cost of a Garden Installation Example

Let's break down a sample garden project so you can see how you'd make money as a garden consultant. Let's do a $3,000 garden project—that's a good mid-range example. Think of someone who'd spend about $3,000 on a couch for their home. That's the same client who'd spend about $3,000 to get their garden set up.

Here's a breakdown of the costs:

• Raised beds = $1,000
• Trellises and other structures = $500
• Plants = $500
• Soil = $500

So we're looking at $2,500 for the products. You'll make a little bit of money on each of these products by buying them wholesale: $100 for the bed, $50 for the trellis, $50 on the soil, and $100 to $200 on the plants.

On top of your markup, you've also got an extra $500 added into the total cost. That money covers your consultation fee, your design fee, and your management of the installation. So on a $3,000 project, you could make about $1,000 between your extra fee and the margin on each product, assuming you price everything right.

Keep in mind that prices are subject to where you live and the price tolerance that your clients have. I've done hundreds of gardens at this $3,000 mark. It's the perfect entry-level garden, something that most people can afford if they're willing to invest in their garden space. For every entry-level garden you sell, you get to make $1,000.

How One Client Can Bring You Long-Term Revenue

Here's the best part: Installing a garden for someone is basically creating a client for life. This person has enjoyed your guidance to set their garden up the right way. You've saved them a ton of money, frustration, and overwhelm by making all these selections for them. Now that their garden is set up, they'll need your help to know what to do in their garden every single month. What to plant, what to harvest, what to remove.

You now have a garden maintenance and/or coaching client you can work with for weeks, seasons, maybe even years to come. I still have some clients that I first started working with in 2015.

Setting up a garden for someone is just the beginning of a relationship that you can nurture for many years to come. That initial $1,000 could grow to $10,000 or even $20,000 per client.

And what a return they get on their investment! They learn how to garden. They have a garden that's way more beautiful than they could have done on their own. And they get to harvest fresh, delicious, nutrient-dense food every week from their garden because of your work with them.

In the end, it's totally worth their investment and your time.

It's Time to Make Money for Your Gardening Knowledge

If this inspires you, then check out our garden consultant certification program. Since 2017, I've certified over a thousand gardeners across the country and around the world to become garden consultants. Many of them have built businesses that have lasted more than five years and made over six figures, just like my business that I started back in 2015. I know how to teach this system to anybody, even those (especially those) who've never owned a business before.

When my clients started paying me to help them in their gardens, it completely changed my life. And it can change yours, too. Together, we're turning garden consulting into a wonderful profession that we can enjoy for the rest of our lives.