Re: Looking for home gardeners

**B* K* E* <b*@xnet.com>**

Miriam,

There are landscapers and then there are those unique individuals who 
come up with novel ideas for  their services.

In my neck of the woods (about 30 miles west of Chicago) there is a firm 
which offers their customers a weed free, pesticide free, organic 
vegetable garden in the customer's backyard.  They design the vegetable 
garden with as much or as little hardscaping as befits the customer's 
needs and landscape. They sell the hardscaping, then come out, set up 
the beds, enhance the soil, plant the veggies, weed the garden every 
couple of days, mulch it, fertilize it, water it, stake the plants, and 
when finally ripe, pick the veggies. At the end of the season, they 
break it down, and apply liberal amounts of compost to overwinter on the 
beds for the following season's plantings..

They promote heirlooms, but will plant to their customers tastes.  The 
picked veggies are left by the back door, neatly arranged in baskets, 
with a few recipes tucked in. 

Her customers are young, up-and-coming execs as well as CEO's of major 
international corporations who are either too busy to have a veggie 
garden or wish to serve their families healthy food but have no desire 
to "play in the dirt" to get them. 

Most important from your perspective, she has as many customers as she 
can handle by advertising a few times at the beginning of the season in 
the upscale suburban newspapers, word of mouth, and repeat customers. 

She does what she enjoys doing, and earns a very decent wage in the process.

Hope this helps.

Betty

Miriam Young wrote:
> Apologies if this message is appearing for the second time - I didn't see it
> come up in the digest so I don't think my initial posting got through.
>
> I am working on a big-time scheme to offer gardening services (anything from
> advice sessions to weeding and pruning to garden makeovers) to members of
> the public - the type of people who don't have the time or inclination for
> gardening themselves, but would pay somebody else to take care of things -
> including going to the garden centre and purchasing any necessary items.
>
> Consumers simply search an on line database to find gardeners in their local
> area who are offering the type of service they want. They contact the
> gardeners, agree a price and pay the gardeners directly.
>
> That is pretty straight forward, but it would be part of a bigger integrated
> project that would offer many other benefits for consumers, gardeners and
> the industry. 
> The concept has had a gig thumbs up from people in various industry sectors
> that would be effected.
>
> My question is how do I find the gardeners to offer the services? 
> Is it a sideline that some garden writers might be interested in?
> It is an opportunity to earn money, promote books etc on the website and to
> gain new experience and inspiration for future articles.
>
> Please let me know your thoughts, whether positive or negative!
>
> Thanks,
> Miriam
>
>
>
>
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