I recently helped friends make a phased plan for their new garden:

• How to design an outdoor space around how they actually lived
• Where to build beds based on how the sun moved across their yard
• What they can realistically grow from spring to fall
• And how to do all of that without blowing their budget

For another friend, I helped her remake an existing garden bed with perennial vegetables, flowers, and ground covers that worked well in Central Oregon, based on my personal experience.

And just the other day I was explaining to another person (in California) how I designed a passive-solar greenhouse for my kids' school, and ways they can incorporate those principles into their own greenhouse design.

At the end they all asked:

Why don't you offer this service to other people?

I actually always have, but only to friends or people referred by my friends.

But that got me thinking...

With my youngest in kindergarten this year, I now have some extra hours to help other people solve their biggest gardening challenges.

Maybe you're starting with a blank slate. Maybe you've already got a garden but it's not going the way you'd envisioned.

If you're feeling a little lost on what you should do, or just want someone to guide you through the steps and hand you a plan that's specific to your garden:

​I'm now scheduling PHONE and IN-PERSON garden consultations.​

Phone consults

Phone consults are 30-minute conversations that I'm calling Phone-a-Farmer. 😄 Share your garden goals and needs and I'll provide feedback, ideas, solutions, and actionable next steps.

Phone-a-Farmer is ideal for people at any stage of gardening, in any climate, who can't get clear answers from Google or ChatGPT. I'm here to give real advice, as someone with years of experience growing food in Zones 5 and 10b.

In-person consults

These 1-hour consults happen in Central Oregon (Bend and surrounding communities). If you live here and need a personalized plan for turning your outdoor space into a thriving edible garden, I can help you design a functional layout, offer guidance on improving or expanding an existing garden, troubleshoot growing problems, and more.

With an in-person consult, we walk your space together and look at how you currently use it. We talk about how you want to use it, what you'd like to grow, where you might run into problems, and how to make your dream garden happen in a region with late frosts, short growing seasons, deer presence, and tricky microclimates.

No matter which consultation you choose, my advice will always be tailored to YOUR garden. I listen carefully and focus on practical solutions to help you save time and money on trial-and-error attempts.

So if you need a little (or a lot of) extra help this season, you can now book a garden consult with me.

Let's get you set up for a successful season!