Garden Consultations

We’re here to help you meet your gardening goals – to that end, we’re happy to talk about anything you want! Some examples might be:

• Starting your garden for the first time
• Planting by seed and starts
• What to plant when – seasonal planting guide
• Maximizing your harvest with succession planting
• Plant nutrition and soil health
• Using the garden as a hands-on learning with your kids
• Anything else you can think of! Let us know when you sign up

Our expert Garden Consultations are offered at a sliding scale with a $10-$75 suggested donation.

You decide how much you want to donate once you’ve had a chance to experience the value of this service. We’ll follow up your session with an email that includes additional resources and a link to donate. 

This program cannot happen without your donations. We pay living wages to the knowledgeable staff that make time to consult with you and work hard to provide you with meaningful information and resources. We hope that you find value in your consultation experience and that you are willing to contribute financially (if able) to make this program possible. 

However, our goal is to make this resource available to everyone who needs it and we know that many people are struggling financially right now. If you are one of those people, we do not want cost to be a barrier for you to be able to successfully grow your own food. 

Consider these questions when deciding how much to donate:

• How much time do you typically spend researching and sifting through information on the internet?
• How much time did you save by talking to someone who has years of knowledge and experience with food production in the Pacific Northwest?
• How important is it to you to contribute to community food security and healthy food access for all?
• What is your current financial situation?
• Are you able to contribute a little extra to help subsidize this resource for someone with less financial resources?

30-Minute Home Gardening Consultation
This is an opportunity to have an in-depth one-on-one gardening lesson with an experienced gardening professional. Each 30-minute session is tailored to your unique goals, garden type, and budget for materials. We will walk you through the steps of designing, building, planting, caring for, and harvesting your own home vegetable garden. 

30-Minute Family and Child-based Gardening Consultation
This option is for parents, professionals, or anyone who is interested in working with kids in their garden. Gardens are amazing places where real-life learning and human development can be nurtured in kids of any age. Our school garden educators have years of experience using gardens to engage students in growing their own food, flowers, and native plants. In addition, they are practiced in using the garden as a learning laboratory for math, science, food exploration, and multicultural lessons. Each 30-minute session will provide you with age-appropriate approaches and lessons to turn your garden (or neighborhood trees and parks) into a fun learning and development opportunity for kids.

10-Minute Free Assessment
Want to learn more about our consultations and whether one would be a good fit for you? Schedule a 10-minute Free Assessment to learn more about our services and what you can expect from our experienced gardening professionals during a 30-minute session.

We understand that schedules change and things come up. We ask that you give us 24 hours' notice before canceling or rescheduling to give our staff time to adjust their schedules and/or open the spot for someone else. 

We use this information to look up your garden site on Google Maps in order to better understand the conditions that you are dealing with at your site.

Check your spam filter! Make sure that @growing-gardens.org is listed as “safe”. A lot of our messages are getting put into spam and we have not been able to figure out why.

You should receive a confirmation email no more than 2 days after submitting your request for an appointment.

You should receive a follow-up email with resources no more than 2 days after your virtual consultation. 

If you don’t receive either of them and you can’t find it in your spam folder, send an email to [email protected].