A Garden Consultant Can Work Almost Anywhere

You're sick of your desk job. You need something with better hours. You want to do work that's fulfilling/meaningful/better for the planet/better for your community.

Is this you? This was me eight years ago. It's not just that I had little desire to use my accounting degree; I had four young children and wanted to find work with a flexible schedule so that I could be there for them after school and on the weekends. I carved out a business for myself from my garden, and since then, the demand for garden consulting businesses like mine have grown.

There has never been a better time to work as a garden consultant than right now. More and more opportunities are opening up every day. You can work with beginner gardeners, cooking instructors, volunteer organizations, event planners, influencers, medical patients, foodies—the list goes on. Gardening is something that pretty much everyone wants to do, but too many of them feel overwhelmed and frustrated when they try.

That’s where you could come in as a consultant. As a garden expert, you show clients exactly what works so they get to enjoy the benefits of the garden without stressing. The exciting part is that you can work with these clients in so many different places, both residential and commercial!

What Does a Garden Consultant Do?

A garden consultant helps people within their communities grow in their very own garden spaces. Along the way, they provide tips, tricks, and garden coaching to help their clients find easy garden success at last.

Overall, the work of a garden consultant can be boiled down to these five tasks:

• DESIGN: Garden consultants design the ideal garden layout for the client, whether that's a small garden that fits on an apartment patio or a huge formal potager that can provide food for hundreds of people.
• INSTALL: Garden consultants perform the heavy lifting themselves or connect with key professionals to get the garden set up and growing.
• PLANT & REPLANT: Garden consultants fill the garden with seeds and plants based on the client's wishes and the current growing conditions. They might return to perform regular or periodic maintenance.
• COACH: Garden consultants offer advice on everything from what to plant each month in their climate to how to manage garden pests.
• SHARE THE JOY OF GARDENING: Consultants show people in their communities all the gardening possibilities that exist right where they live. They invite people to come learn new gardening skills and make the garden part of their healthier lifestyle.

That's garden consulting in a nut shell. Now let's look at some of the places I've worked as a garden consultant.

Places I've Worked as a Garden Consultant

In the past eight years, I've worked in the following places:

• Schools
• Country clubs and event spaces
• Restaurants
• Yoga studios and fitness places
• Community centers and organizations
• Client's backyards

A Garden Consultant Can Work at Schools

When I was just getting started as a garden consultant, a landscaper I'd worked on a kitchen garden project with referred me to the Joy School in Houston. The school works with children who have different learning needs, and they wanted someone to create a professionally built raised-bed vegetable garden for them. I ended up installing two really long beds, one for herbs and another for veggies. It was a lot of fun to work with the students and teachers.

There are two great thing about working with schools. One, the students get so excited about the tactile learning opportunities in the garden. And two, they go home and tell their parents. Even if you're not hired to install a garden for a school, you could offer to teach a garden class at the local preschool for free, in exchange for being able to give each child a little card about your business to take home with them. Their parents might just be looking for ways to get their children outside more or to eat healthier or to spend more time together as a family.

A Garden Consultant Can Work in Country Clubs and Event Spaces

Businesses involved in hospitality make dream clients for a garden consultant. One of my biggest clients in Nashville to date owns an event space that hosts weddings and other large celebrations. The owner had a large grassy area that was underutilized, and she wanted to turn it into a garden that could be the center of their event space.

There are already so many hospitality businesses in your area that would love to have a garden as their main selling point. You can do workshops and events in the kitchen garden you create for them, which would allow you to meet more clients. I mean, you're basically standing in a living billboard for your business. In exchange, the business gets to showcase their new garden.

A Garden Consultant Can Work in Restaurants

If a restaurant wants to be associated with the freshest, most locally sourced foods, what better way than to have their own kitchen garden on display?

Not only can you design and install incredible commercial-level gardens for this type of client, you can earn continuous revenue by offering educational coaching for staff and garden maintenance. You can host workshops in the new garden and offer garden tours.

One of our Gardenary-certified consultants, Juliellen Sarver of Plantae Gardens in Richmond, Virginia, focuses mostly on working with restaurants and hospitality businesses. Just working with one sector gives her more than enough business.

A Garden Consultant Can Work in Yoga Studios and Fitness Places

HOTWORX or your local yoga studio might not be the first places you think of when you imagine having a garden business, but they actually align perfectly. Places where people go to get fit know their clients are likely focused on eating clean and local and filling up on the most nutritious foods for their body.

You could call up a yoga studio and offer to teach a class on how important it is to source your food locally after their 10 a.m. class. They’ll say “Of course!” because, one, aligning themselves with gardening is good for their image and, two, it gives them an excuse to invite more students to come to their 10 o'clock class. Make sure their whole business gets an invite to your post-class party. I’ve done lots of parties like this to grow my business.

A Garden Consultant Can Work in Community Centers and Organizations

Nonprofits, local parks, churches, mosques, synagogues, tabernacles, community centers, community gardens—all of these are great organizations to align your business with. Early on, I did a workshop for a local garden club. This enabled me to meet lots of women who are leaders in the community and who direct other community initiatives. As a result of this workshop, I was asked to create a garden for a large local business.

Ashley Irene of Heirloom Potager in Orange County, California, worked with an LA nonprofit called ICAN, which helps adults with developmental disabilities learn life skills. The program director reached out to her to transform a 2,400 square-foot dirt lot into a garden. They worked with Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops to build the planters. It truly was a community effort.

I recently worked with Born to Heal Ranch and Retreat in Hempstead, Texas, to install a garden (pictured below) in their wellness retreat space. It was a privilege to create 1,000 square feet of garden space to help women in their healing journeys.

A Garden Consultant Can Work in Clients' Backyards

The most common place a garden consultant will work is in the homes of their clients. You'll visit the client's outdoor space and do a garden consultation, a garden installation, a garden coaching session, or garden maintenance.

A garden consultation is typically done in person, but I've also done virtual visits, as well. This is when you talk to the client about their gardening goals and determine the ideal location and layout for a garden based on the space available.

For a garden installation, you might be the one performing the work of getting the garden built and set up, or you might oversee contract workers who are doing the labor.

A garden coaching session helps clients troubleshoot issues they're having in their gardens or learn how to best plant, tend, and harvest their plants. Coaching sessions can be offered on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.

Garden maintenance is when you return regularly to the client's home to plant and tend and keep the garden tidy.

Of course, all of these services can be provided at restaurants, event spaces, schools, and more, but most garden consultants spend the majority of their time working with clients who just want to have a garden space right where they live.

Where Are You Most Excited to Work as a Garden Consultant?

Where could you see yourself working this time next year? In five years? This isn't an interview question—I really want you to envision all the possibilities outside an office.

I've been working in my community for the past eight years, and I can tell you that the demand for more knowledgable professionals like me just keeps growing. If you think that garden consulting could be for you, I'd love to help you get started. Our Gardenary Consultant Certification program has trained thousands of gardeners how to set up successful businesses just like mine. You can learn more below.

Thanks for being here and helping to make gardening ordinary again!