3 reasons why you should hire a garden consultant

So yes, I’m biased. But here’s the deal: I was once in your shoes. I can relate to struggling beginner gardeners all too well. In the information age, “free” info is everywhere. Why would we hire someone to tell us what we might find for free? Well if you found this page, you may already have that answer.

Yes, I’m hugging my peppers. But I love them!

Garden consulting is not a new concept, but it has taken off in the last few years of our culture being in a constant state of stress and overwhelm kind of generally all the time. And when you take up a new interest or hobby, it can make your head spin even knowing where to start. I am self-taught and have planted nice things in hopes they grow (aka “gardened”) just for fun for about a decade. I grew up in Austin Texas and have gardened in San Antonio and Austin for the majority of time. Gardening in Texas is crazy hard! Our weather is up and down and our soil is unforgiving. Now I’m the obsessive type, so I’ve gone a little nuts diving into the world of gardening, veggies in particular, and especially the organic approach. But not everyone is like that, and sometimes we just want to enjoy the end result without the headache. After working with my clients, here’s what I’ve learned the top 3 reasons are you should hire a Texas garden consultant:

1) Your time is worth it!

Too many people undervalue their own time. Your time on this earth, doing things that bring you joy, with people at places that bring you joy is time you can never get back. Often there are “no brainer” things people will hire someone else to do, because taking the classes, buying the tools and getting up on a roof in 100 degree heat… no thanks. Just hire the roofer to fix that leak! But a lot of things people think they can figure out on their own are deceptively difficult. Landscape design, exterior home design, major home lifestyle changes, home vegetable gardening, raised bed construction, and garden design, creation, and maintenance are all on that list! And maybe you enjoy the process of 10,000 hours learning about it in your path to achieve the end result, and that’s great! But if you have other ways you want to spend your time, that’s OK, too. If your goal is to have a nice outdoor space to share with friends and family and have a kitchen garden that thrives, you will save literally thousands of hours hiring a garden consultant to do it for you!

2) The information is just too broad - and too specific.

If you are doing something highly specialized like permaculture, kitchen gardening, water-wise design, home composting, food forests, etc, the amount of information out there, between the books, YouTubers, googling, online groups and forums, and college degrees - there is so much to sift through. And a lot of it isn’t local advice, or worse yet, is contradictory to other advice! It can be so confusing. Hiring a real life person to make a relationship with to ask specific questions to is a much smoother, simpler path to get there. Your garden consultant who knows you and knows your specific property, landscape, garden and goals saves so much headache. And many of the things you may want to do (raised beds, permaculture, home composting, etc) are also so specific, asking the “generalists,” (aka, garden bloggers and influencers who aim to please the masses) often just doesn’t resolve the specific and unique problem you have.

3) You know who to go to when things go wrong.

The job of garden consulting can be a lot of different things, but it’s normally a combination of providing advice and a service and a product at the same time. If you order that raised bed kit off Amazon and you suspect the design is causing one of your plants to suffer, who would you trust to confirm that? If you Google advice to manage a particular pest and the problem gets worse, how do you follow up? When you are just too tired and busy and your garden needs a compost top up at the end of the season, who do you call? Having that relationship gives you a go-to person for support who is invested in your success. If your garden consultant gives advice and you take it, and then something weird happens, that consultant is the best person to help you troubleshoot!

So there you have it. Just like you have no business putting braces on your teeth or a new windshield on your car, your outdoor space is just as precious and important and effects your day to day life, good or bad. Make your garden a more successful place of joy, save your time and avoid the headaches and hire a garden consultant local to your area to help you out!