Today, you know me as a master gardener. You also know me as someone who consults people on their gardens and helps them choose the best style, the best layout, the best plants and the best methods to use. I’m a gardening consultant and I am very good at what I do. More than that, I absolutely love what I do. It is the best job in the world and I would never want to do anything else. But how did I get here? Did I always want to be a gardener?
The answer to that last question is no. When I was young, I wanted to be a princess. Because, of course I did. I also wanted to be a ballerina and a singer and dancer and basically any other typical job the little girls aspire to.
Once I got a little bit older, I really wanted to be a banker. Specifically, I wanted to be a bank teller. Yes, I know. Aiming high, right? But whenever I went to the bank with my mom and I saw the teller, I just thought it looked like such a cool job. I’m really glad I changed my mind on that one. I would’ve been extremely bored with that.
When I was in junior high, we moved to a new location and to a new house that my parents bought on a fairly large piece of property. I guess it wasn’t that large, but it was larger than anywhere we live before and that meant that my mom could garden.
She always enjoyed gardening, since she grew up on a farm. Farming was simply in her blood and whenever we visited her family, I got a small taste of that. I always enjoyed it, but never considered it beyond that. However, now that my mom started gardening at our new home, I occasionally helped her out. And I really loved it.
I love the you’re actually helping life grow. You plant the seed and many years later you have a tree that gives you apples. It’s just an amazing feeling and so much fun to do. It does take a long time, which is a little bit frustrating at times, but you can also just buy trees that are already grown. During this time, my mom became a master gardener. She did more as a hobby than anything else. She loved doing it to relax.
For me, though, watching her get her master gardener certificate and watching her garden and, more than that, helping her in her garden, left a lasting impression on me. It was then that I decided that I want to do something in the field of gardening. When I was in high school, I got a summer job at a gardening store. I continued this throughout college to help pay for school.
In college I studied botany, figuring it was the closest degree to gardening. It was far more scientific than I wanted, though. I enjoyed working in the garden using my hands. I do not care too much about studying plants. I just want to grow them. Nevertheless, that degree allowed me to get jobs that eventually led to me becoming a consultant. Once I was a consultant, I also got my master gardener certificate. As mentioned before, that helped me in that I could now charge a lot more for my services. It also meant that I was finally where I wanted to be in life.