What’s a Gardening Coach?
What does she do?
Is it right for me?
The term Gardening Coach might bring to mind, a guy with a whistle in sweatpants, screaming at someone to weed harder? “No worries, says this Austin Gardening Coach, ”I’m not that kind of coach. My whole point in coaching people is giving them information and knowledge they can act on right now.”
A gardening coach provides a “short cut” of sorts for people who are genuinely invested in creating their own outdoor space.
A garden coach can help you avoid costly mistakes.
A garden coach can help you make a plan. Your plan is a road map to success. It assures that you arrive at your destination/landscape goal without costly delays, dead ends, or wrong turns.
If you are not required to submit a formal landscape design to your city or homeowners association for pre-approval and your budget is tight, we can lay your design out on the ground and I will bring my marking paints. The paint will last for weeks without heavy foot traffic so you can live with the full sized design on the ground. After careful consideration, you can widen that path, patio, or flowerbed before construction begins.
As a “professional” landscape designer and contractor practicing more than 10 years in Austin, TX, I gravitated towards clients who were interested in their gardens and also wanted to have a hand in doing the ‘dirty work’.
The New York Times describes a gardening coach as “A new addition to the landscape industry, GARDENING COACHES — or gardening mentors as they are sometimes called — are the personal trainers of the prune-and-plant set.
Their target audience — do-it-yourselfers in search of enlightenment — occupies a middle ground between the people who simply sit back and watch, while others do the planting and mulching, and amateur plant killers whose gardening strategy can best be summed up as trowel and error. ” Read the complete New York Times article on gardening coaches.
My Garden Coaching Services
Do you have DIRT? I can help.
Over the years I find myself walking into all sorts of situations from new houses with acres of blank landscapes to old or neglected gardens ready for renovation. Each landscape comes with it’s own existing challenges. Each homeowner carries a unique dream for their perfect garden. Manifesting your dream garden is my goal.
Some people need to know what’s in their just-purchased yard, so I tell them what to keep, what to yank, and how to take care of it all. This usually involves teaching them how to prune their trees, shrubs and perrenials and other horticultural tasks. Unlike reading about it in a book or online, your coach is standing in your yard and showing you what to do next. I promise no whistles or shouts!
Experienced gardeners sometimes need a new pair of eyes on their garden, or permission to remove a plant they no longer treasure.
Sometimes my clients are transplants from another region and don’t know what plants/soils/other conditions they have in their yards. You can read gardening books, but unlike a coach, they don’t pat you on the back and say, ‘Go ahead and do it’.
Sometimes I act as shopping coach at the local nursery to help clients make appropriate plant choices. Retail nurseries typically stock whatever is blooming that week. If you buy all your plants in March, your landscape will not see blooms the other 11 months of the year.
There are other pitfalls at nurseries for the novice gardener. Don’t believe every tag that you read. Does the grower live in Texas? Those full sun or shade recommendations on every plant tag are notorious for being wrong. Full sun in Minnesota means 4 hours without shade. Full sun in Austin means 10 hours without a speck of shade and soil temperatures that rarely drop below 90 degrees in August.
Part of the challenge for both experienced and newbie Austin gardeners is the excess of information out there on the Internet, catalogs, books, magazines and HGTV. How do you winnow? Will it work in Austin? How long will it take for you to figure it out? How much will it cost?
Successful Garden coaching rquires more than plant knowledge.
I have the ability to recognize when some aspects of a project are beyond the ability of even an experienced DIY. Most important, I have the ability to recognize when a site has problems which require the input of a civil engineer. Drainage can be in that category.
Yes I know the Austin plant palette but I also know how to design and build the hardscape elements required to make your outdoor rooms beautiful and practical.
Do you want stone patios, paths, borders, fire rings, fireplaces, or outdoor kitchens? Do you want decks, fences, pergolas, arbors, trellises, or a gazebos? Do you want moving water, pools, or a spa? Do you want terraces and retaining walls for exquisite slope gardening? Can you install an irrigation system or outdoor lighting without help?
Do you need help with drainage and erosion issues? Will you recognize those issues before they cause expensive & permanent damage to your house or landscape? I have a working acquaintance with reputable masons, landscape contractors, nurseries and other businesses that I can recommend to clients who want help with ‘building the bones of their garden’…. while reserving all the DIY they desire. I can supervise the work for you or with you. Your choice.
My landscape design clients are often accomplished do-it-yourself gardeners who want the hands on satisfaction and control of doing a great job for themselves. I can provide you turn key installation for the complete project where you let us do the heavy lifting; or I can supervise your work crew; or I can coach you on how to do-it-yourself. Don’t you love lots of choices? You get to pick the combination that works best for you.
BEFORE & AFTER (8 months later). Sylvia’s Design – Homeowners DIY install
The before and after pictures above show a DO-IT-YOURSELF INSTALL of the landscape design that I created for this couple. My client is an accomplished software engineer and his wife is a nurse who is an avid gardener. They are both young, strong, healthy and able to follow an instruction manual. To conserve budget they undertook the entire installation by themselves. (It was before I offered garden coaching services).
They did an amazing job! Their Layout of the backyard dry stream bed is close to the design parameters. What they accomplished is really stunning. They transformed that huge, ugly drainage ditch into a beautiful focal point. Maybe I’m the only one that knows the dry stream bed rock work, especially the boulder size, type and placement, is amateurish. Maybe I’m the only one who notices the weeds growing in the frontyard gravel path because I know that Nuisance Weeding is caused by inexperienced installation methods.
It was after the Lee project that I realized my clients often needed ongoing support after their design is completed. Many clients wanted the services of a landscape contractor to build the hardscape elements while assuring proper drainage and erosion control. Many clients needed a licensed irrigator to install the sprinkler system that is so necessary to ensure long term tree survival during Texas droughts and healthy new plant or lawn establishment.
After many years of design client requests (begging actually) for continued maintenance support, I added my gardening coach services. At first, I only helped those who used my landscape and contractor services. Word of mouth and referrals soon had me busy with requests from their friends, family, and neighbors.
Many cities and homeowners associations now require submitting professional, detailed scaled landscape drawings before they give permission for builders and homeowners to install the new landscape. Typically, the homeowner is unable to move into the house or close on the mortgage before the landscape is installed. My landscape designs always get a quick approval from even the toughest management companies…Like Stratus Management in Barton Creek and the City of Lakeway. I provide architectural quality scaled blueprints for both hardscape elements, and the planting plan. A detailed plant schedule is included and all plant symbols are called out by both common and botanical names, quantities and required nursery sizes.
My Personal Style
Naturalistic, full, lush, beautiful, eco-friendly. I call it Sustainable Gardening and it’s inspired by Mother Nature. Traditional, formal gardens are not my personal style but I understand their requirements and appreciate their beauty. I happily coach their owners without prejudice.
Maintenance Mentoring
Your garden is there for your enjoyment, not your enslavement. The amount of maintenance a garden requires depends on how the garden was designed and planted. I teach the high-pleasure, low-drudgery, eco-friendly kind of maintenance. I will gear practical low maintenance schedules to the exact collection of plants in your garden.
My Garden Coaching Rates
$100 for the first hour of coaching services including travel time from Austin, TX. $50 for each additional hour. Coaching sessions typically require 2 hours for the initial property assessment. problem solving, Q&A or planting plan. Hands on assistance with planting, construction, or maintenance might require up to 4 hrs. Seasonal visits or monthly on-site tutoring is also available.