Nicole's Quick Take: If you have a passion for gardening, don't sell your produce; sell yourself as a garden coach. Documenting what you already grow is the fastest way to turn that expertise into a coaching business.

Sell Your Gardening Experience, Not Plants or Produce

Way back in 2015, I decided I was going to start my own gardening business so that I could make money for my family but still have flexible hours. I wasn't quite sure what I would sell—I just knew I loved working in my garden—so I googled "how to make money gardening". The results told me I could turn my backyard into a mini garlic farm or plant nursery.

Eventually I settled on selling bags of lettuce. I was growing an abundance of organic produce in my own garden, after all. Why not sell it?

So I registered a business and called it Rooted Garden Goods. Shortly after, however, a friend of mine said, “Nicole, I don't want to buy stuff from your garden. What I really want is to learn how to garden the way you do.”

A light bulb went off in my brain! I realized, Oh my gosh, that sounds so much more fun than washing lettuce. I want to teach people; I want to be a coach for adults! I changed the name of my company to Rooted Garden and began to advertise my company as a garden consulting company. The rest is history. 

If you're interested in making money as a gardener, the best product to sell is not something you've grown or harvested from your own garden. It's actually your gardening experience. You can work as a garden coach to teach others how to find success gardening. (Learn more about why people really will pay you to coach them.)

So, how you do go about selling your experience?

Grow a Business from Your Gardening Experience

You don't actually need to be a master gardener or a horticulturist to sell your gardening knowledge to others. I hear so many people say, "Oh, I would love to grow a garden coach business like yours, but I just don't have enough experience yet.” 

I think a lot of us fool ourselves into thinking we need to be at a certain level before we can be a good coach or a teacher, when really, we just have to be able to take our knowledge and turn that into a system we can pass along to students and make them feel accomplished—that's what coaches do. (Learn more about the qualifications to become a garden coach.)

The first step to turning your knowledge into something you can sell to clients and students is probably not what you think. It's not going out and getting a Master's in botany. It's not buying a farm.

It's simply documenting what you're doing in your own garden.

That's right. The one key thing you should start doing, if you have even the slightest idea of growing any kind of business from your own gardening experience, is to take photos. Use your phone until you can get a nicer camera.

Document What You’re Doing

Whether you’re growing herbs in a few pots in a high rise apartment, huge houseplants in your living room, or hundreds of plants in a sprawling homestead—whatever the case may be—document every single piece of what you’re doing in the garden. 

I realized the power of documentation in establishing myself as a respected leader in the garden coach industry. As an added bonus, as you’re documenting, you’re also creating your teaching methodology that you could use with students and clients later.

So, what do I mean by documenting? 

1. Start growing something! If you’re here, you probably already are doing that or really want to. So get started! 
2. Make a list of projects that you’ll document over the next month or two. For me, it could be growing the basil in my herb planter or watching my cilantro go to seed. I can document the wins, losses, successes, frustrations. The more I document, the better it is! 
3. Set a schedule. At least once per week, take pictures, videos, time-lapses, slow mo's, etc. Document the progress of your projects over time. It's even better to do this daily.

Create Content 

Now you have all these videos and photos that you can turn into content to share your journey with others! This shows that you’ve got practice, not just great ideas. Where can this content live? All over!

Social media

Share it publicly on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and/or TikTok (wherever your audience is!), and start conversations about the projects you're doing to establish your credibility. This can be used to gain an audience and attract potential customers in your area.

A website

Use your beautiful photos and videos to show off your skills in the garden. They can be used as blog images or a gallery of what you’ve accomplished to build up credibility with potential clients.

An Ebook

Detail out how your project panned out in an ebook. This will allow you to really dive into the journey in detail. Keep the book engaging with your photos, examples, and storytelling.

Define Your Methodology 

While you’re documenting and sharing your content, you’ll start to create your methodology and philosophy around what you’re doing—and you may not even notice! Just by paying more attention to what you’re doing, you’ll start asking yourself questions more regularly like: “Did I like how I planted that?" "Was that a good idea?" or "What would I do differently next time?”

The more we focus on the things we’re growing, it starts turning the wheels in our brain so that we come up with answers, methods, and principles that weren’t there before.

The First Thing to Do Is Begin

If you’re thinking “It would be a dream for someone to pay me to help them in their garden,” I challenge you to pull out a camera or phone and start documenting the work you’re doing in the garden. Before long, you’ll realize there are all kinds of lessons from your garden experience you want to teach! And as you start to share them, you just might discover there are a ton of people who want to learn from you.