Do You Know How Much Money Is Spent on Gardening in Your Area?

The answer is going to surprise you. Industry statistics tell us that over $150 billion—that's billion with a B!—are spent every single year in the United States on gardening products and landscaping services.

That's about $100 billion on landscaping services (everything from mowing and blowing the yard to planting perennials) and $50 billion on garden and landscaping products (so plants, plants, and more plants, plus things like pots, trellises, soil, etc.).

Billions of dollars every single year, and yet nobody seems to know what they're doing with the garden. The people I talk to swear they have a black thumb and can't keep a plant alive. So what is all of our money accomplishing?

That was my question when I started my garden consulting business back in 2015. If everybody's spending all this money on plants, why do our plants keep dying? Why are we all so frustrated? What can we do about this?

Garden Consultants Bridge the Gap Between Products and Services

This is where garden consulting comes in. It's not a landscaping service. It's not a product. It's right in the middle. A garden consultant gives the advice and coaching that's necessary to make sure people spending this $150 billion actually have success with their investment.

If you're reading this, I'm guessing you've had this thought: Could I turn my love of the garden into a business? And then it was probably followed by this: Oh no, I couldn't do that. People who garden are trying to save money. They'd never spend money to hire me. There's no way I could actually make a living doing that.

Am I right? If so, I want to give you a quick exercise to complete so that you'll know how much money is spent in your town or city on the garden. I think the number will shock you. And hopefully, it'll encourage you that you could absolutely make a living and support your family by gardening as your career if you can make even an itty bitty fraction of the total amount.

I mean, when I did this exercise eight years ago, my first thought was, "Sign me up!" I couldn't wait to get started.

How to Figure Out How Much Money Is Spent on Gardening in Your Area

We've got about $150 billion being spent every year in the United States on landscaping and gardening, and there are currently around 330 million people in the United States.

If you do the math, that works out to about $450 a person. Of course, little babies aren't spending any money on the garden yet. And I'm sure there are plenty of people out of the 330 million who aren't interested in anything related to plants. So some people are spending a lot more than $450, while others are spending a lot less. But we have a nice average.

Now, all you have to do is figure out how many people live in your town or city. Then, calculate how much money is being spent on the garden right where you live by multiplying $450 by the population of your area. (If you’re outside the US, you’ll just need to do a quick search to figure out how much is spent in the landscaping industry in your country.)

You might be in a big city, a small community, or somewhere in between. I'll give you three examples for cities of different sizes to show you what these numbers can look like.

How Much Money Is Spent on Gardening and Landscaping in a Medium-Size City

I currently live in Nashville, and we have a population of just under 700,000 people. That means that $314 million is spent on landscaping and gardening every single year in my city.

Think about it this way: There could be 300 landscaping businesses that each make $1 million here. Or there could be 3,000 businesses that each make $100,000. That's so many businesses!

How Much Money Is Spent on Gardening and Landscaping in a Large City

Now let's look at a really big city, Houston. That's where I started my business. There are 2.2 million people in Houston proper. Guess how much money is spent on the garden each year? If you said $998 million, you are correct.

Again, you could have 998 businesses that each gross a million dollars in Houston.

How Much Money Is Spent on Gardening and Landscaping in a Small Suburb

I hear some of you saying, "Well, Nicole, that's really impressive and all, but I don't live in a city the size of Houston or even Nashville. This wouldn't work for me." So let me bring you to the suburb I lived in back in Chicago, home to about 20,000 people. Even in that little town of 20,000 people, $9,225,000 is spent each year on landscaping and gardening services.

That's still nine businesses that could each make $1 million.

Garden Consulting Is a New Type of Product to Offer

Now, here's the really cool part: These numbers only account for landscaping services and products. What's not in here is consulting. That's even above and beyond this $150 billion. You're offering a new product as a garden consultant—something completely different.

Basically, every other product and service offered in that $150-billion-pie is not really geared toward giving the client/customer success. It doesn't help them learn a new skill. It just gives them a plant or a new garden space. It doesn't teach them how to keep their new tree alive or how to ensure their landscape continues to thrive season after season.

No one, except for we garden consultants, is teaching people how to actually become a gardener.

So do this math with me and figure out how much money is spent in your town, and then ask yourself, "What if I got just a little bit of that?" Imagine if you can earn just 1% of what's already being spent in your area. That’s not that large of a share, right?

What If I Got Just a Little Bit of That?

I asked myself this question eight years ago, and it completely changed the trajectory of my life and my career. It's the same question that gardeners all over the country and across the world have answered inside the Gardenary Consultant Certification program.

If this number intrigues you and you like the idea of helping people make the most of their investment in this industry, then you've got to consider becoming a Gardenary consultant. At the very least, I hope you're encouraged that you can, in fact, make a living as a garden consultant right where you are.

Remember, people are already spending a ton of money on landscaping and gardening. They're just not spending it with you yet. You have to go out and get your slice of the pie. If they’re going to spend this much money, why shouldn’t some of that be spent on you? You care about them having success in the garden. You want to help them. You won’t just toss them a bunch of products from a big box store that are going to fail to solve their problem. And that's what makes all the difference.