Encouraging other gardeners

I've had such good experiences over the past decades encouraging folks about gardening.  There have been classes, presentations, newsletter articles, field trips, school groups, etc.

But my landscape consultations have become increasingly rewarding, too, in recent years.

I started doing 2-hr consultations when I cut back my hours at the South Carolina Botanical Garden to half-time about a decade ago;  I realized after doing classes about "Creating a landscape that you love" and "Home landscape fundamentals" that folks were delighted to have personal coaching/teaching beyond these classes. As a decades-long teacher, I realized that I was actually pretty good at helping people figure out what THEY wanted to do in their gardens.

I was able to encourage them to visualize their interests and visions for their gardens (usually). So when I started doing this, it was for a donation to Education Programs at SCBG.

Now, I do consultations as benefits for the various places that I teach classes or do presentations, or simply for a local non-profit, if someone has found me through my website, which is relatively unusual.

I am so delighted to help folks think about their gardens;  I've just done two site visits over the last two days, totally different, but both nice.

One contribution will go to a local native plant garden (Botanical Gardens at Asheville), where I teach regularly, with the other going to the Autism Society of Western North Carolina, where the main gardener contributes her time.  Both work for me!

Since I'm talking about Pocket Meadows again tomorrow, that'll be the image for this post.

in early August

It's a summer and fall front garden, for sure!  This image is definitely exuberant;  we were traveling a lot that summer.