Costco Connection - March 2010

garden home &
A garden coach can help you reach your green aspirations Coaching: It’s not just for sports

TBy Christianna McCausland THE GROWTH OF environmental aware- ness and the “locavore” (those who consume products grown close to home) movement has given rise to a new generation of amateur gardeners. Yet despite the abundance of online information at their would-be-green ;nger-tips, plenty of people are standing in their gardens and wondering where to start. Rather than bumbling through the bushes, some homeowners are turning to a garden coach for tips and techniques.

“A garden coach is like hiring a profes-
sional trainer for your garden,” explains Costco
member Cathy Stein, owner of Eclectic Design
Choices and a coach in Dallas–Fort Worth,
Texas. “;e role of a garden coach is to show a
homeowner how to make improvements and
maintain their landscape, to assess the needs of
their landscape and show them how to put it
into top shape.”
Though many small nurseries have
o;ered coaching services for years, the term
“garden coach” emerged in the blogosphere
only in the last three years. According to Doug
Green, a garden writer based in Ontario,
Canada, the coaching phenomenon is the
result of two converging trends. “;e ;rst is
the desire to cocoon, to have your own garden,
grow your own food and control a bit of your
environment,” he explains, noting the rising
popularity of backyard farming. “Secondarily,
you have many people who have no training
in gardening. Many baby boomers didn’t gar-
den and didn’t teach their kids. Now you have
;rst- and second-generation kids who are say-
ing, ‘How do you do this?’ ”
According to Green, a Costco Executive
Member, saving the time, money and anxiety
caused by beginners’ errors are among the
bene;ts of hiring a garden coach. Especially in
the current economic crisis, a coach can pro-
vide a few hours of consultation and leave
behind recommendations the homeowner
can execute on his or her own, a substantial
cost saver compared to hiring a landscape
company or designer o;ering turnkey design,
installation and maintenance. A coach will not
do heavy li;ing, such as installation and main-
tenance, but any good coach can provide
referrals for those resources.

Before

Sue Goetz, a garden coach in Washington state, says of the client she helped guide from (above) to (right): “She had a big list and a small yard. After our initial coaching session, I came up with a design with all the ele- ments, from the rock wall shape and type to the placement of the plants, then followed up with ideas and supplier information to keep the plan on track.”

After

need to hire a landscape company to do things
for you; you just need that professional touch,
someone with some experience and knowl-
edge base in landscape to show you how to get
things done.”
;e typical garden-coach client falls into
one of several categories. Many are avid DIYers
who are in their ;rst home and anxious to get
their hands dirty but with no knowledge of
plants. Others purchase a home with a mature
garden they don’t know how to maintain.
Goetz’s clients include a young couple with a
new baby who needed help de;ning play and
planting spaces in their small urban garden
and a woman who needed help designing a
vegetable garden for her disabled son.

“;e length of a [coach-client] relation-
ship is very personal,” says Goetz, a Costco
member. “It can be a one-time visit to identify
plants for a homeowner and teach them how
to prune. I have another client that calls me
out, on an hourly basis, whenever they’re
working a new area of the garden, perhaps a
few times a year.”
Garden coaching is in its infancy. Many
horticultural professionals o;er the service as
a sideline to another career. Susan Harris,
a garden coach in Washington, D.C., main-
tains a directory of coaches at her Web site,
Sustainable-Gardening.com. She explains
that there is no certi;cation to become a gar-
den coach, so it is “buyer beware.” However,
she adds that “most coaching gigs are [one
to two] hours, so there’s not a whole lot of
;nancial risk for the client.”
When selecting a coach, “Any informed
homeowner needs to ask about formal train-