3 reasons why you should hire a Garden Consultant (not a general landscaper) to build your Texas vegetable garden

Firstly, I have to say, I love general landscapers. We use them in our business and the services they offer are highly valuable to millions of homeowners. They have the right tools and the right team to get the job done and save homeowners precious time to spend doing something else. I hire them personally to mow, edge and trim up my yard as much as I can afford to, ESPECIALLY during our hot, Texas summers. I’d much rather spend time with my edible babies. I also love watching them work; and so do my children. I’ve had many a young toddler gaze out the window in amazement as they make such quick work out of our large space. (Or at least it feels large to me when I’m the one mowing.)

All that said, their role is very specific. They are an important part of our garden installations to prep the space, remove grass, lay down boarder materials, shovel wheel barrows full of stone, and much more of the hard labor part to putting together a beautiful garden of raised beds. But I do not consult with them on how to build the garden, where to put it, what to plant in it, nor would I elect to have them maintain it. And I believe, neither should you. They are an integral part of the process, but a Garden Consultant who specializes in building an organic growing system to sustain food is critical, and here’s why….

1) Organic food gardening is a knowledge-based business, where a specialized knowledge matters.

The individuals doing the “work” in a general landscaping company may not have knowledge or experience in growing food crops in central Texas. It’s just not a required skill for their job. Even the more experienced middle management is in the business of hearing what you want and doing it. He may advise on material prices or quality, but he isn’t required to have the training on the mechanics of a garden system, soil quality or more. He may not have any education, experience or skills in earth-friendly methods, soil microbiology, or the particular horticulture needs of a kitchen garden. If a customer approaches a landscaper with their own ideas of where they want the garden, the size and shape and what they want planted, a landscaper will do it. You hire a landscaper to do the work. A skilled Garden Consultant on the other hand is hired to know what needs to be done. The right Garden Consultant will listen intently to your vision and intentions with the space and get to know your unique style, then make clear and simple recommendations based on their own specialized expertise and experience. They will recommend the size, shape, location and materials of your garden based on what your goals are and what you want to grow. And they also function as a key relationship if future problems with your grow space arise.

The #1 reason why veggie gardeners fail is from trying to grow the wrong plant at the wrong time of year. Since most edible food grows as an annual, with a total lifecycle of 3-6 months, you will need to constantly replace plants and know precisely which plants do well at which times per year. Yes, you can find the growing calendars online for your specific Texas hardiness zone and region, but only a Garden Consultant with years of experience growing in Texas can truly determine when things need to be put in the ground and when they don’t. Making the mistake of planting the wrong plant for the current season can invite pests and disease and cause a whole host of other headaches and time wasters. Not only that, but each food crop has very different needs. Tomatoes, squash, peppers, onions, herbs, melons, strawberries, peas, beans and leafy greens all need different depths of soil, different watering methods, have varying nutrient needs and suffer from different pest and disease issues. A Garden Consultant specializing in home vegetable gardens has the precise knowledge to not only talk to you about how to care for plants, but also how to design your garden beds (depth, size, location in your yard and more) to ensure the plants you want to grow do the best they can. While general landscapers are fully capable of building any type of bed, applying soil and installing plants, only a specialist in home vegetable gardens can fill in the largest gaps.

2) Landscapers aren’t always zeroed in on the “organic” ways.

While many companies do advertise and work with chemical free processes and native plants, that’s often the extent of it, and if a customer asks for an alternative, often they will oblige. If you want to xeriscape with only natives or build a wildlife or pollinator garden, you will need to find a specialist. A Garden Consultant knowledgeable in the organic approach is even more specialized. Organic food gardening, when done properly, is more effective at building healthy plants and soil, and producing a ton of delicious food and warding off pests, than an approach that’s not, or even one that’s partially organic. One or two uses of synthetic products (even those marketed as food-safe, it doesn’t matter), can damage soil, stress out plants, and increase problems of pests and disease. After this happens, and you have unhappy garden owners, a company that isn’t fully committed to organic products and methods may be tempted to recommend the “better” approach, being more harmful synthetics, and thus the cycle continues. A general landscaping company can be very convincing with a lot of, “this works all the time,” or “it’s totally safe” to sell you products for your garden. Organic gardening is way more about knowledge than products. Which, I suppose, brings us back to #1, but in truth, that’s what you are buying with a Garden Consultant.

3) Garden design matters.

From the type and depth of amended soil you select to the material, size and structure of the garden; all these decisions hugely impact the success of your food crops. There are precisely one million options in this regard. There isn’t one “right” way, but there are many, many terrible ways. Metal, wood, stone, concrete, what dimensions, which type of trellises, the depth and structure, all matter. And depending on what you want to plant, there are pros and cons that will be felt for months and years after a garden is designed and built. Many landscapers will not even tough the construction of the raised beds. They can easily clear the space of sod and weeds and can most certainly plant plants. But there’s a huge gap here with the actual bed; the design, construction and installation. You can find many raised bed designs online, but are they the right size, shape a materials for your unique space and style and built to grow happy plants for years? If your landscaper doesn’t also do woodworking, now you are doing that piece yourself or hiring another professional. Your Garden Consultant takes care of every bit of this process for you. That said, you can certainly construct a raised bed yourself, but to be sure the design is both beautiful and functional, your Garden Consultant can provide you a DIY design that’s set up for success.

We hire specialists to build and maintain our pool, and build and inspect our home.

Your Texas culinary garden needs a specialist also.

So when you are ready to commit to having a really beautiful, serious food space to nourish you and your family and guests for years to come, hire a Garden Consultant, who can design you a beautiful space, build it, and even maintain it, too, so all you need to worry about now, is which 10 varieties of heirloom tomatoes you will make salsa with this year.