Garden Coaching
What is a garden coach? I had never heard of it either! LOL. It sounded a little made up and out there the first time I heard the term. So if you are hesitant, I totally understand! I was you!
Once I dug a little deeper, it all made sense. I was hooked and I knew this is what I wanted to be! A garden coach is what I wished I’d had 10, 15, even 20 years ago. Garden coaching is totally an awesome thing!
Let’s begin by defining the word “coach”. The first definition I found is a horse-drawn carriage, especially a closed one. Not what I was looking for. Keep looking. The second definition of a coach is a train car. To be honest, these were not the definitions I was looking for, however, there was a lightbulb that came on. After all these years of having a cross country coach, a high jump coach, a rowing coach, hiring a swim coach, and a tennis coach, even a piano coach (some say teacher), I have never once thought of a horse and carriage or a train. Did you?
However, both of these definitions of coach, a horse-drawn carriage and a train car, are about travel. They get you from one place to another! I love this! (I also love digging deep whether it’s soil or language). How crazy is that!? It makes so much sense to me now. I’m here, and I’d like a coach to take me there.
But, I kept following the list down on my google dictionary until I came to the definition of a coach that I was expecting, “ One who instructs or trains” (Interesting that the word “train” is in the definition I was looking for. It still relates to getting you from one place to another.) That is the noun, coach. Now if we look at the word coach in its verb form, we get…: to train intensively by instruction and demonstration.
As a homeschool mom, I find this fascinating! I realize that I might be alone in my wonder, but I’m ok with that.
Switching gears to our next word, “garden”. You can define a garden in lots of ways, but instead of giving you all the definitions, I’m just going to give you the definition we use here at Learn to Bloom. When we say, “garden”, we mean a raised kitchen garden for growing vegetables, herbs, and a few flowers.
Are you ready? It’s time to marry our words together.
A garden coach is someone who wants to journey with you, as you go from knowing very little about the kitchen garden to becoming a proficient gardener, by both instruction and demonstration.
That’s me! That’s what I am! I’m a garden coach. Two years ago I had no idea that was a possible career. And I love it. I get to teach my neighbors how to grow in our unique climate. I get to encourage and instill confidence. I get to help gardeners skip past a lot of my failures. And that is why the Learn to Bloom tagline is “Growing Gardeners, Not Just Gardens.” We want to grow you! We want to see you get from being a seed of hope to being a fruitful plant.
Our goal is not to just install gardens and maintain them for clients, although we do both of these services. Our main goal is to grow gardeners! We want you to bloom into the gardener you were created to be.
It makes me sad to see you declare you can’t grow anything. You just weren’t equipped with the knowledge. No one showed you how. YouTube and books are great resources, but it’s hard to find information for our city. And it takes a lot of time and energy to research. Don’t beat yourself up or throw in the towel when your garden isn’t growing. Get a coach!
Learn to Bloom is here to show you the path and be by your side as you grow your Houston, TX kitchen garden all 12 months of the year! Yep, all 12 months, even in a three-digit July. Follow along by signing up for our free newsletter. If you are looking for help with a specific problem in your garden, we have one-hour in-person coaching appointments to get you back on track!
If you are a beginning gardener in Houston who wants to gain garden confidence quickly and really understand a full growing season in Houston, we are launching our first 3-month seasonal coaching class (September-November). You will have weekly one-on-one time with me to ask your questions, along with group lessons and additional videos from the Learn to Bloom garden. (In order to keep costs down, this experience will not be in person. We will use zoom.)
However, if you are looking for an in-person monthly or bimonthly coaching package that goes through all four growing seasons, send us an email.
We are super excited about these new opportunities! I hope to really dig deep with some of you!
