It’s a glorious mid-spring day here in Maryland, perfect for the Open Garden and Plant Giveway I’m throwing for my coaching clients.  This is the first of its kind, though,  I’m not sure why because my garden yields lots of passalongs every year and who better to give them to?  Also this year I’ve started sending clients seasonal to-do lists with links to full instructions.  Rather than write up names and instructions, I’m sending everyone to this page to find out what they have and how to keep it alive. 

Your new plants

• New England asters are native to this area and love the sun.  
• Celandine poppies are native to this area.  They only bloom once – now – but the foliage looks fabulous all season.  They’re shade-lovers that’ll seed vigorously for you.
• Solomon’s seal  do bloom but are primarily grown for their green and white foliage – though they’ll disappear completely after the first hard frost.  Their tuber-like roots spread and make this plant quite drought-tolerant, but those tall stalks may flop after you’ve planted them.  If so, you could cut back the stems by half or even stake the stems til the roots are settled enough to hold them up.
• Astilbes like shade or part-shade (preferably not hot afternoon sun).
• Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae (Robb’s Spurge) is what I have the most of.  I’ve trimmed off the chartreuse flowers on the giveaways because otherwise, they’d flop (not liking being moved in flower).  These evergreen beauties can’t tolerate any hot sun directly on them.   They spread by those long tendril-type roots.
• The assorted hostas have to go because I now have deer.   Except for a couple of short green and white ones, they’re all large cultivars, blue or chartreuse.
• Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ are 15" tall, love sun and attract swarms of pollinators.  Their cauliflower-like flowers start creamy in late summer, then turn pink, red and rust in succession.  You can leave the dried flowers up all winter for "winter interest," but cut off the dead ones in early spring. 

How to keep them alive
Get them in the ground as soon as possible, with good soil-root contact (pat them down) and give ‘em a good soaking.  Then keep the soil around them wet for a week – longer if they’re in the hot sun (and you might even construct some temporary shade for them.)  Then keep an eye on them for the first month in their new home.  Especially when the temperatures are near or approaching 90, like now, transplants are in danger of not surviving the move.  Water, water, water. 

This rash of publicity for garden coaching is creating a whole new bunch of coachees, and one of them is my new favorite.  Not just because his professionally designed garden was so damn gorgeous, which it was.  But because he decided the estimate he’d gotten for maintaining it – $11,000 a year – seemed outrageous, and he wondered if he could do it himself, with a little coaching.  And because he took careful notes as I explained how to prune each of his shrubs and by the end of the walk-through he was visibly excited and exclaimed, "I feel so empowered!"  God, I love that shit. 

It seems that this surgeon-gardener had read many books about pruning and was still afraid to take action – it’s all so confusing!  Yeah, I hear ya.  That’s why teaching pruning one-on-one, in the garden, is so much better than books, videos, PowerPoints and all the rest.  Coaching rules!

Open Register is taking on the Coaching Challenge with some great ideas for their members, the indie nurseries.

And here in the DC area, writer/editor Kathy Jentz covered the coaching phenomenon in her gardening column in the Washington Examiner Newspaper.  Great article, Kath!  (But who are those people in the photos, anyway??)

Here it is in PDF: Download GardenCoach9-14-07.pdf

First there was garden coaching, and now that it’s been discovered, for me it’s morphed into coaching garden coaches.  Mentoring, if you will.  It means compiling information about everyone for the Directory, answering emails and even some phone calls.  One very nice gardener in Montana called and asked some great questions, including: What do you take with you to see a new client?  This was my answer.

PRUNING TOOLS
I take with me my three main pruning tools.  That would be the Felco number 2s, (on the left in this photo), some loppers, and a folding pruning saw.  SO many people need instruction in pruning, and you just never know what tools they’ll have.  More often than not if they have any pruning tool it’s the dreaded shearers. 

MARKING PAINT
Oh, I made fun of this product once – remember the "marking paint" that turned out to be clear?  Well, I know now to look for not just the words "marking paint" but a can top that’s an actual color, preferably a bright one.  But the point is to quickly draw some suggested new borders, and this stuff does the trick.  If people need assurance that the paint won’t last forever I tell ‘em 2 weeks, max.

BUSINESS CARDS
I’ve changed my business cards so many times over the last couple of years, it’s a good thing they’re free at Vista Print, just $5 for shipping.  The only catch is that there’s a tiny advertisement for the Vista Print Company on the back of each card, but no one’s ever seemed to notice it.  (Here’s the design I chose.)

THE PLANT LIST BOOK 
This is such a fabulous idea – the New York/Mid-Atlantic Gardener’s Book of Lists – and it was recommended to me by a garden designer, so I ordered it.  And the plant lists may be mostly correct, but I’ve crossed out some that I know perform really badly in my area, like rhododendrons and leucothoes.  And missing from the list of "Problem-Free Shrubs" are spirea, weigela, aucuba and nandina, beautybush and cherry laurels – literally the 6 easiest shrubs in my whole garden.  Yet the relatively thirsty hydrangea macrophylla IS on the list.  Oh, and guess what other list those hydranageas are on – deer-resistant plants.  Uh, not hardly! Still, after I marked up the lists to reflect reality, they’re actually helpful.  And I think people like the assurance of something in print, don’t you?

And through the recitation of these tricks of the trade, the Montana coach hung on every word, I tell ya, and was mighty appreciative.  I encouraged her to "return the favor" by writing a little story someday about her adventures as a gardening coach.  I might even nag her for that report.

I’ve encouraged people to take up garden coaching and – yay! – they’ve responded.  My Worldwide Directory of Gardening Coaches now lists 23 coaches.  But before you quit the day job, here’s a reality check.

It’s hard enough for anyone to make a living in the gardening field generally but at least landscape architects and really successful designers get hired for BIG jobs, usually for a cut of the whole project. (And someone correct me if they’re paid a flat fee.)  But coaches are hired on an hourly basis – and for very few hours, at that – so it’s not like a lifetime of Freudian analysis.  Most of my clients need one or two hours and I never hear from them again.  If I reminded them of my gardening brilliance regularly, as my friends suggest, it might result in more call-backs but really, most of them are on their way and don’t need regular visits.

So even at my recently increased fee of $75 an hour, how much money can there possibly be in it? Remember that the appointments have to be when the client is home on the weekends, and naturally during the gardening season.  And the kiss of death to career aspirations?  While the universe of people who need it is HUGE, the people who know such a service exists, seek it out and make it happen is tiny, tiny, tiny, even with all the recent publicity.

Despite the pitiful financial returns, here’s why it’s still a good idea for some people:

• The need is there and it’s really fun to help people in this way.   Plus, the folks who hire garden coaches are a damn nice bunch. 
• Gardenwriters can use coaching to learn a lot and beef up their resumes, while earning some extra cash. 
• Landscape architects and designers can add coaching as one of the services they offer.
• Retirees and Master Gardeners?  Go for it!

But if you were thinking that coaching would ever pay your mortgage, sorry about bursting that bubble.

IS IT TOO LATE TO COACH SOMETHING ELSE?
Just the other day a DVD arrived from CBS of the personal coaching segment on "Sunday Morning" and I was surprised to see that the wardrobe or "image" consultant featured in the segment is someone I actually know – cool! Then I listened and heard Rita Braver say that this other kind of coach charges $250 an hour.  Crikey!  Where does she find clients who can pay that kind of money?  I’m afraid the answer is that she’s rich and probably knows most of the rich people in D.C. (Her brother is Dan Glickman and their family seems to have made a fortune in scrap metal.)  So that $250 fee is another case of the rich getting richer, I’m afraid.

I learned a thing or two from this story in today’s Free Press:

• The original New York Times article on the subject reported on the "growing demand for people who work as garden coaches."  Hell, yeah!
• There’s such a thing as the Michigan School of Gardening, started in 1996, with 1,600 students and counting.  I noticed there’s a class called GardenWalk but it’s nothing like the Buffalo and Chicago Walks; it’s about walking your own garden and learning from it.  Yet another great definition of the term.
• The enterprising owners of that school also created the Practical Gardening Institute to dispense even more good gardening information.  Looks like they’re doing lots of things right in Michigan.
• My ambitiously named WorldWide Directory of Gardening Coaches might just be having an impact.  It got these fine Michigan gardeners a little publicity, after all.

Great story, Marty, and thanks for the link to GardenRant.