How Much Money Can You Make as a Garden Consultant?

Foreign. How much money should you charge your clients as a garden consultant? I am so excited to break this down for you over the next few minutes. So if we haven't met yet, my name is Nicole Burke, and if you don't know my story, about eight years ago, in 2015, I started a garden consulting business right out of my backyard. I had a cute little garden right next to my driveway, and I told people that I could help them learn how to garden the way I did. And I started in 2015, and in one year grew my business to make over six figures. And I've been doing it ever since. In fact, in 2017, I'd had so much success that I decided to start teaching this method and this profession to others. So over the last six years, I've certified over a thousand gardeners around the country and across the world to become garden consultants. And many of them now have built businesses that have lasted more than five years and made over six figures, too. So I'm speaking from a lot of experience, not just of growing my own garden consulting business, but of helping hundreds of other gardeners do the same. So let's talk about how much money you can charge as a garden consultant with going to talk about a specific project. I'm going to break down the numbers for you at the very end of this video. So stay till the end. I'm going to give you numbers on one specific gardening project. But before we do that, I want to break down, really, an hourly wage and why you can charge that kind of wage. So, you know, there's this idea that I come across with so many gardeners when I start talking about garden consulting, and they're like, I, I can't charge someone to teach them how to garden. Like, that's something I have to give away for free. And I've had this conversation. If it's been with one person, it's been with hundreds of gardeners who feel compelled to share all their garden knowledge, to give their garden expertise and never charge for it. And I think that's a very noble thing to do. But there is a phrase that I heard years ago that I always say to these gardeners, and that is those who pay pay attention. And I don't know about you, but watching my kids, watching the general public, even watching myself, the way I treat things that are free versus the things that I pay for is a totally different thing. So someone hands me a booklet, you know, a pamphlet, even does a service for me for free. And I mean, I might enjoy it for a few minutes. But it's not going to take a lot of my time and attention, and I'm definitely not going to make the most of that free thing. But when I pay for something, when I save my money, when I use my money to buy something, I see that something in a totally different way. And the same is true for garden knowledge and garden teaching. And so, yes, people can get lots of information on YouTube and on Google, they can read all the gardening blogs for free. And maybe they can even get help from their neighbors and other gardeners in their community for free. But the people who go out and hire an expert, who find someone who truly knows your local climate, who knows what grows when and best and pays them to come and help them in their garden, those are the people who are going to pay the most attention and most likely the people that are going to have the most success. So, absolutely, you can give away your knowledge and your consulting services for free. But at the end of the day, we all have to pay the bills. We've all got to buy our own groceries and cover the roof over our head. And so this is a wonderful way to make a living, to do a side hustle, to make a little bit of extra money using the knowledge that you have in the garden to turn it into a. So with that established, yes, you can charge to teach others how to garden. And I'm going to show you why you're worth their hard earned money. So first off, you have expertise. So you are charging for all the knowledge, all the experience that you have gardening up until this point. Now you may think, oh my gosh, I've got so much more to learn in the garden. There are years ahead of me before I can become, quote unquote, an expert in the garden. What you don't realize is all the clients who want to work with you, they don't need you to know any more about the garden. They just need you to know more than they do. There's a phrase I love to teach new garden consultants, and that's that there's always a freshman class. You know, in high school, you think the only person who can, you know, be the boss and like, be cool and in charge in the school is the senior. But really, the senior is way too far removed from a freshman. By the time those freshmen come in and the seniors see them, they have nothing to offer them, right? They have long forgot how hard it was to be a freshman. But the sophomores, now the sophomore can totally help the freshman because the sophomores had a whole year at High school already. They know the ropes, they know the ins and outs, they know all the hard parts of being a freshman. And so a sophomore is always the best person for a freshman to look to for advice and help and also some friendship, right? Because this is tough. So the same is true in the garden. Often the best teacher, the best consultant is not the senior. It's not the PhD in horticulture or even the master gardener, it's the sophomore. It's the person who's been in the garden for three, four, five seasons and can teach their their knowledge, share their experience with the person who's a freshman. Because there's always a freshman class, there's always a brand new gardener that's looking for someone like you, who has a few more years of experience in the garden and can get down on their level, speak to them right where they are and help them. So that's the first thing that they are paying for when they're hiring you as a garden consultant is your expertise. You've done it before them. And so by having done one season, two season, five seasons in the garden, that's experience they're paying you to share with them, you are going to jump them forward. 2, 3, 4 seasons in the garden. All the mistakes, Think of all the mistakes, all the lessons you've learned in your previous seasons in the garden. Boom. The minute someone gets an hour with you, you get to give them all that knowledge and experience and expertise and suddenly they move from a complete novice to someone who stands speaking and growing and gardening as a more experienced gardener simply because you transferred your knowledge and expertise and gave it to them. So that's the first reason that someone would pay you as a garden consultant. The second reason that they would pay you is for you to pick out things. It's for your preferences and selection. So you know when you're buying a book, when you're buying a piece of furniture, maybe stuff in the garden too. Where do you scroll to first when you're trying to make that buying decision? You go straight down to the reviews, right? You want to know what people like you have thought about this particular product or thing. And the same is true for all the things that your clients are thinking about buying in the garden. Whether it's large structures in the garden like raised beds or trellises or focal points for their landscape, whether it's the particular plants that they need to buy, whether it's the type of soil that they should be looking for, whether it's the right nursery to purchase these things at all those things, all those decisions on what to buy and where to get it, those things take time and a ton of scrolling and research. And for most people, for many people, all the research is not worth their time. And so they either quickly spend money at a place that was a total waste of their money, or. Or they don't move forward with their goals of gardening because they feel overwhelmed with all the choices available to them. That's where your expertise comes in to make the selections for them. And this is a reason why you're worth your money that you can charge as a garden consultant. So I found in my very first consultations I did the client, I would give them directions. I would say, now you're going to order some raised beds, and then you're going to get some trellises, you're going to get some pea seeds. And then they would follow right back up and say, well, where do I get those? And which one do you recommend? And what size should I get? Just simply telling them to do a certain thing wasn't enough. They wanted the specifics. In fact, they wanted to know what I would order. In fact, they wanted me to order it for them. And that is the power of consulting. You come in with your expertise, and then they not only want you to teach them things, they also want you to show them your favorite things and order those things for them as well. The next thing that they will pay you for is your design. Now, you may be saying, nicole, Nicole, I am not a garden designer. Like, literally, I just put some plants into my raised beds. But believe it or not, even if the only thing you're doing as a gardener is arranging your plants inside your beds, putting together the different plant combinations and the way that you'll grow your garden, you're still a designer. You're creating art inside those planting beds. And your clients will pay you to help them do that as well. So many of my students and clients, everybody online, they are terrified that they're going to put the wrong plants together, that they're going to plant the wrong thing, that they're going to mess it all up by putting one certain plant alongside another. And they're waiting for someone to have the expertise to say, hey, these plant combinations, they work. And that is a thing that you're. Your garden clients are definitely going to pay you for. So how can you provide this to them? Well, you can do planting plans for each season. So our gardenary consultants, a big piece of what we deliver is every season we create a new planting design or a planting plan for our clients. Now, we may go in and actually install the plants ourselves. The client may never even see the plan. But for more DIY clients, we can provide the plan, and then they can make that plan happen in their own gardens. Now, if you do feel a little bit more artistic, feel a little bit more like a designer, then you can take this to the next step and you can actually tell them where to put the beds in their landscape. You can tell them the best beds to choose. You can start helping them pick out parts of their landscape, parts of the garden, especially the kitchen garden, that are going to align best with the landscape that already exists. Now, again, this is a skill you can grow into. It may be a skill that you already have, but this is definitely a skill that people will pay you to help them with. So many people are afraid their vegetable garden is going to be that awkward, ugly box in the middle of the yard, and they want a garden. But maybe their spouse or a family member, someone has scared them into the fact that they shouldn't do it because it's going to be so ugly. You know what I mean? And so that's that. That nervousness that they have that they're going to have an ugly garden that's going to spur them on and encourage them to pay you to the garden for them. And again, maybe you're not a landscape designer. You don't have to claim to be anything that you're not, but you can give them your best opinion. And believe it or not, this is a skill you can grow and that you probably already have if you've been designing and growing your own garden for a number of years. All right, the next reason that a client is going to pay you as a garden consultant is for your oversight. So not every garden consultant wants to do this, but a lot of times you're going to have an actual project happening as a result of your consult where your client's putting in a new garden into their space. Now, they may be installing it themselves. They may be hiring someone to install it for them, or you may be finding the people to come and install this garden for them, or you might be the one doing the installation. There's all different levels of service that you can provide, but the thing you should always provide and charge for is oversight. And what this just entails is you being there during the installation process. Whether your clients doing it themselves, they have someone they've hired, you're doing it, or you've hired someone, your oversight is essential. You're taking over the hard Task of supervision. And if you've ever supervised anyone, you know that this is truly a job and it is something that's worth good, hard earned money to pay for. So I started getting paid to do oversight for garden installations very early in my work as a garden consultant. In fact, I was essentially the person installing and over siding at the beginning, but quickly moved into a place where I would hire other contractors or I would work with other companies and I would be there on site to make sure that every piece got delivered, every piece went in, and everything worked out the way it should be. Listen, people pay wedding directors, right? Wedding coordinators, people pay for trip coordinators. People pay a lot of money to hire people to have oversight and direction on all kinds of things that they do in their lives. And so it totally makes sense that they would pay you and to have oversight for their garden installation as well. The final thing, and there's probably at least five or ten more things that you could charge for as a garden consultant. But the final thing I want to touch on is your ongoing coaching and instruction. So we talked at the beginning that they're paying you for your expertise. And that's at the very onset, right when you come in, you give them this overview of this is what the garden should look like, this is how the garden grows here in our city. This is when to plant, what all that comes at the beginning. But what you can charge for, and this is a beautiful part about garden consulting, is it's really a ready made subscription service because as you and I both know as gardeners, the garden is so dynamic. It's not like the landscape that just kind of sits in a boxwood that does its own thing all year long. The vegetable garden, particularly the kitchen garden, is so dynamic. It's changing from week to week, day to day, hour to hour. And so you can provide ongoing coaching sessions and instruction and even ongoing maintenance services, even if you're the person just doing the oversight all throughout the season. So this, like I said, is a wonderful ready made subscription service where they're not just going to pay you right at the beginning to be their garden consultant. They're going to want you to come again and again to continue to help them, coach them and guide them, and every single week or month or quarter throughout the seasons to come. All right, So I hope you're believing in yourself a lot more than you were at the beginning of this video. I hope you're seeing, oh my goodness, I've got a lot to offer, because you absolutely do. I completely sold Myself short, when I first started my garden consulting business, and you're not going to believe it, but my first price for a garden consult back in 2015. I know this was before the inflation took off, but still, I only charged $25 for a garden consult, a one hour garden consult. Now, to me, to get paid $25 an hour to do a garden consult seemed like, I mean, I felt like a millionaire. If I could walk up to someone's door, talk to them about the garden for an hour and get paid $25, yes, I was in. But I soon learned, well, the demand added up so much that I had to raise my price just so I wasn't. But I landed around at least starting at $100 for a consultation. So if you're in the US and you're watching this around somewhere around 2024, then that's a number that I like to say as a baseline. So if you're looking for just a baseline charge for a garden consultation in person for an hour, then I would say charge at least $100. This is going to cover your travel time to get to your client. This is going to cover the hour that you're going to spend with them, your time back home, and then any work that you've got to do to follow up with them and make sure that they get to use your consultation to the best of their ability. All right, so that's for one consultation. Now, if you're going to do ongoing coaching sessions, these are going to be a little bit shorter. There's not as much to teach in those sessions. I would say those should start at least at $50 per session, but they could start more at 75 or $100 as well. Again, this is going to vary based on where you live, based on kind of the, the level of your clientele. Like if there are more DIYers or if they're very used to paying for services. But I'm trying to give you a good general range. So consults start at least 100, and then coaching sessions start at least at 50. Now, once you've charged for your consultation and for your coaching sessions, then the fun begins because you're in it. You're doing this garden project with your clients. And so this is when you get to add on charges for the design, for the oversight of the installation, for the selection of the materials. So there's a way that you get to make a little bit more money as a garden consultant on every one of those items. So when you select a raised bed or a Trellis, you can order those at a wholesale price. You get to charge retail price, and you could even charge a selector's or a designer's fee on top of that price of the product. Same goes for the oversight. Right. So you would pay for whoever's doing the labor, and then you can charge a little bit more to cover your time with oversight for that project. So you have a little bit of wiggle room on every single item, every single thing that comes into this full garden project. And you get to charge a little bit more for your time for each of those aspects. So let's break down like I promised you at the beginning, let's break down one garden project, and I can show you how this would work out for you to make money as a garden consultant. All right, so this is going to be a $3,000 garden project. This is a very good kind of mid range. I like to think of a kitchen garden as would this. Would a person buy this who would buy this? Right. And I think the same person who would buy a couch would for around two or three thousand dollars. Okay, so you want to think about clientele. They're spending about two or three thousand dollars on some furniture in their house. That's the same client that would spend about $3,000 to set their garden up. So let's break down the pricing. Let's say that the raised beds in this garden are going to cost about a thousand dollars. The trellises, other structures, they're going to cost about 500. And then the plants in the soil, they're going to cost about around 500 as well. So we've got plants, we've got structures like trellises, we've got raised beds, and then we've got soil. So we're at about $2,500 in terms of the products. All right, so all the products total about $2,500. You're going to make a little bit of money on each of those items. So let's say on the raised bed, you're going to make $100. On the trellis, you're going to make 50. On the soil, you're going to make 50 to 100. And then on the plants you're going to make, say, 100 or maybe even 200. On those plants, if you get those wholesale, then finally you've got wiggle room. You've got about 500 extra dollars that you'll add on to the total package. That $500 is going to cover your consultation. It would cover the design to set up the design for what this kitchen garden is going to look like. And then it would cover your oversight or coaching to help them get this garden set up. So you've got $500, you know for sure you're going to make, which covers your consultation, the oversight, and some of your design fee. And then on the other $2,500 part of this garden installation, you're going to make probably another $500 when it comes to the margin that you get to add to each of those items. So altogether, on a $3,000 project, you could make about $1,000. And if you price it right and you get all those pieces around that price point. Now, again, this is totally subject to your particular area where you live, the price tolerance that your clients have. But this is a great example. And honestly, I have. We've done hundreds of gardens at the $3,000 mark. It's a wonderful entry level garden. It's something that most people, if they're buying furniture for around 3,000, then they can absolutely invest this into their garden space. You get to make about 500 to $1,000 on that one garden. And here's the best part. You've now created a client for life. So this person has had your guidance, your supervision to get their garden set up the right way. You save them a ton of money, a ton of frustration, a ton of overwhelm by making all these selections for them. Now their garden's set up, but guess what? Every single month, they're going to need your help again. They're going to need to know what to plant, when to plant it. They need to know what to put, what, where, when to harvest, when to pull it out. And so you now have not just a client you've gotten to do a garden for, but you now have a garden maintenance or coaching client that you're going to get to work with for weeks and months and seasons, possibly even years to come. We still have clients that I first started working with in 2015 that we still touch their gardens and get to work with them on a weekly, if not quarterly or monthly basis. So that's how it works. The 500 or $1,000 you can make per client is just the beginning of a relationship that you can use and enjoy and nurture for many years to come. And so that 500 to 1,000 over, you know, two, three, five years could become 10,000, up to 20,000 per client. And what a return they get on their investment. They learn how to garden. They have a most beautiful garden set up. That's so much prettier than they could do on their own. And then they get to go and harvest fresh, delicious, nutrient dense food every week from their garden because of your work with them. So it's totally worth their investment and totally worth your time. So if this inspires you, then you have got to come and check out Gardenary's certification program. I've been training gardeners around the country, even across the world, for years. I know how to teach this system to anybody, even if you're just beginning a business, even if you've never owned a business before. So come and check out the certification program. Depending on when you're seeing this video, we have a kickstart coming up where I guide you through a week long event to introduce you to garden consulting and help you find out if this is a field that is a fit for you. The kickstart starts every few months, so if you missed the first one, stay around and come and join us for one in the future. We'll put all the links to join a Kickstart and to learn more about the certification program right below this video. Thanks so much for watching. And thank you to the hundreds of clients who've trusted me in their garden over the years because you were willing to pay me to help you in the garden. You've completely changed my life. And now to the thousands of clients who hire gardenary consultants around the country and across the world. Thank you for bringing the garden back with us and making garden consulting such a wonderful profession that we can all join in and enjoy for our lives. I'll see you guys next time. 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