Looking for a Part-Time Job with Flexible Hours?

In 2015, I was a stay-at-home mom who needed to contribute some extra cash to my family, like, immediately. I applied to a bunch of different jobs, but I had some pretty specific requirements.

I could only work from 9 am to 12 pm while my youngest was in preschool because I really wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.

I could never work evenings or weekends.

I would need to stay home on an instant's notice if one of my kids were sick.

Oh, and I wanted to do something I felt passionate about.

So, do you imagine any company wanted to hire me?

You know as well as I do that the whole 9 to 5 thing doesn't work for everyone. Maybe you're caring for young children like I was. Maybe you're burnt out from the daily grind. Maybe you're finishing up a degree. Maybe you're preparing for retirement but don't want to sit at home all day. Or maybe you just want a little side hustle to earn some extra cash but still have time to pursue other interests.

Start Your Own Side Hustle from Home

The only way I could figure out how to have a job with flexible hours doing something I loved was to start my own business as a garden consultant. I took a preschool refund check for $450 and used it to start my business out of my backyard garden.

To make it work, I shopped for materials and dropped off raised bed gardening kits while my youngest was in school. I dragged her along to a couple consultations with clients. I created planting plans while my kids were working on homework.

In just 15 months, my company grossed over $100,000. That's with me working part-time, y'all. I paid myself about $25,000 for my work, which is way better than the $20 per hour I could have gotten working another typical part-time job.

I don't have professional training. I'm not a master gardener or a horticulturist. I just had a couple successful years of gardening under my belt and felt confident I could teach beginner gardeners how to grow in our climate.

So if I could do this, you can do this, too. Here's why I think garden consulting is the perfect part-time job if you like to garden.

You Can Work Completely from Home

If you need a remote job—maybe to stay home with a child or another loved one who needs round-the-clock care—then garden consulting can work for you.

You can work from home creating things like planting plans and garden designs.

Make Planting Plans from Home

Planting plans don't have to be anything fancy. I literally made my first planting plans for clients with my preschooler's colored pencils, okay?

If you can't draw, don't worry. I'm definitely not an artist. I use different colors and draw circles to represent the herbs, flowers, and veggies for each plan. We do have garden consultants with more artistic abilities than me who create beautiful water color planting plans. But if you're not an artist, just know that you can still make this work.

You can create plans by hand or digitally for your clients. The only thing you really need is knowledge: What are the measurements of the beds you're creating plans for? What growing season are you about to enter? And what grows seasonally in your climate? That's all you need to create super helpful seasonal planting plans for clients.

You can charge $100 per plan, and each plan might take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours of work. Clients are more than happy to pay for planting plans so that they feel confident they're growing the right plants for their climate and season.

Create Garden Designs from Home

Another thing you can create while sitting all comfy in your home office is a garden design. To create a garden design, you need to know the measurements of the client's space. You'll come up with different design options that would work in the space available and then deliver the final design to the client.

A garden design is a bit more advanced than a planting plan. If you are an artist, you could draw the gardens to scale. Otherwise, you'll need to use a design program like SketchUp. (We teach our students how to create top-notch designs with SketchUp in the Gardenary Consultant Certification program.)

You can charge at least $200 per design. (We have experienced garden consultants who charge upwards of $500 per design!) It takes most people about 3 hours to create a well-rendered design.

This is a fantastic remote work idea if you need to stay home. You can sit on your couch and make planting plans and garden designs for clients, and they will pay you to do it.

Of course, if you want to go out and meet clients at their homes and do garden installations, you can. But you can also grow a successful business treating this as a fully remote part-time job if that's better for you and your family.

You Can Have a Flexible Schedule

Many of us just can't work a 40-hour work week. Or we can't do the whole 9 to 5 thing. I know for me, I could only work while my youngest was in preschool when I first started my business. I basically built a super successful company working just 3 to 4 hours a day. There aren't very many other business models where that would be possible.

Two things you can offer that work around your schedule are garden consultations and coaching sessions.

Schedule 1-Hour Garden Consultations

During a garden consultation, you'd drive to your client's home and assess their space for a garden. You'd listen to their gardening goals and then help them figure out what they'll need in order to set up a successful growing space. The clients are essentially paying you for your time and your advice.

You can charge at least $100 for a consult, and it takes about 2 hours total (1 hour to meet with the client and about 30 minutes of drive time each way).

I went to hundreds of consultations in the mornings while all my children were at school.

Schedule Coaching Packages

You can also work with clients who already have gardens set up. A lot of people rush into starting a garden and then grow discouraged after a season or two when they're not seeing the results they anticipated. Maybe they're struggling with pests or their plants just aren't growing.

As an experienced gardener, you can step in and coach people how to find success in their own gardens. You can schedule single coaching sessions or create packages so that you can guide a client through a season or maybe even an entire year in the garden. You can visit with them at regular intervals until they're confident in their abilities.

You can charge $150 per hour for a coaching session, or you could do a package of 5 sessions for $500. This is a great way to set up regular income for yourself.

It's easy to schedule consults and coaching sessions around your schedule. You can even set up time slots when you're available in a calendar and have clients book themselves. That way, you only work when you want to work.

You Could Work Only in the Evenings or on Weekends

We have Gardenary consultants who fit their business into whatever hours of the day they can find while they keep full-time jobs. One consultant, Juliellen Sarver, built her successful native plant installation business during her lunch breaks and weekends. Her weekend time slots are booked up months in advance. "There is more garden business out there than I can actually do at the moment," she told me.

We have consultants who are still working full-time as lawyers, teachers, and even cybersecurity analysts. Nicole Jagielski balances her job as a lawyer and her popular gardening business in Chicago by setting aside just 20 minutes a day for her company.

You might think that working two jobs would be exhausting—and I'm sure it can be. I'm not trying to give you the impression that this is easy. But one thing I hear consistently from our consultants who are still working full-time is that their day jobs deplete them. Working on the side as a gardening consultant is what fills their cup back up so they don't feel completely burnt out.

One way to make money as a consultant if you only want to work evenings or on the weekends is hosting gardening workshops or classes.

Host a Garden Class or Workshop

You can host classes and workshops on all different topics related to gardening—everything from making dried herb wreaths to planting a salad container garden. Find a place to host your class or workshop and then charge $50 for a class and $75 a ticket for a workshop. It's well worth your time as long as you can get about 5 to 10 participants to sign up. I've hosted workshops at my home, at clients' homes, at restaurants, in yoga studios, and in public spaces like parks.

We have consultants who've built entire businesses around doing classes and workshops in their spare time. Tammy Lowe teaches classes as a side hustle while she's still working at her corporate job. She says her classes bring joy to her life.

All of these pictures, by the way, are from a super fun workshop I offered last spring. I held the workshop at Juniper Green because I'd designed their kitchen garden for them and it's the perfect location for a small event. I brought supplies for everyone to set up and plant their own little salad container garden. I gave a brief talk about how to care for and harvest the salad plants. And then we all ate some garden-fresh salads. It was so much fun and really simple to put together.

When I was first starting out, the workshops I hosted were much smaller than this one, but they were still a great way to meet potential new clients and spread some quick gardening tips.

You Can Start Small to See if Garden Consulting Works for You

The wonderful thing about this type of business where you are basically the commodity is that you can work as little or as much as you want. Many of our consultants start small while they're still working another job to see if they could see themselves making a transition to full-time consulting in the future.

That was the case for our consultant Sara Rubens. She was working a corporate job remotely during the pandemic when she first started consulting on the side. She was just installing some gardens for fun when she realized she might be able to make a whole career out of it.

She was certainly glad she already had this idea when she was laid off from her job right before Christmas one year. She shifted gears to her gardening business and has been able to completely replace her corporate salary. Now she has a business that brings her happiness and that she can continue to run long after her old job would have forced her into retirement.

Garden Consulting Can Solve Your Problems

Becoming a garden consultant certainly solved a lot of my problems back when I was a stay-at-home mom trying to re-enter the professional world. My husband and I no longer struggled to pay our mortgage each month. I was able to be home with my kids when they needed me. I earned extra money doing something I really cared about.

Think about what your most pressing problem is. Is it money? Let me tell you something: Earning a little extra money can solve a lot of problems. Money won't solve all your problems, but it'll solve your financial problems. If you need to make some cash fast, the best thing to do is sell products like plants, garden beds, and even raised bed kits. Products are the fastest and easiest way to make money.

If time is your biggest issue, then try doing a service for people. Create a planting plan or a garden design so that you can get paid as a direct result of your time.

All right, what if your biggest problem is more existential? What if you feel like you're missing purpose in your life? You want to do something more meaningful. If that's the case, then sell your advice. Put all that experience gardening to work by helping other people get started.

Garden consulting checks all the boxes. You're not going to get rich quick, but you can bring in extra income on a regular basis. You can make the most of your time if you're a stay-at-home mom or a caregiver. And you'll be doing work that you really care about. I mean, I think we can all agree the world needs more gardens, right? What if you could be responsible for designing or building more gardens in your town?

You can do that working a couple hours a week or 40 hours a week.

The Right Side Hustle Can Change Your Life

At the end of the day, you deserve a job you love. You really do. And you should be able to work that job in whatever hours you have available and from home, when possible.

When I started garden consulting, I felt like I stumbled upon the most incredible side hustle—something way better than I ever could have imagined—so I knew I had to share it with other gardeners. 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.

I don't have an MBA, so I know that starting a business can be like speaking Greek. It took me years to figure everything out, but now I've distilled all my knowledge into a 12-week program for my students. I teach them how to install beautiful gardens using the Gardenary framework, how to set up their businesses, how to market their services, and so much more.

Check out the program to see if it's right for you. Either way, I hope you can find a part-time job that gets you out of financial stress. I hope you enjoy the work you're doing and feel that your time matters. We should all be able to do the part-time job we're dreaming of, even if we have to build it from scratch ourselves.

Here's to a life you love, doing work that you love!