Create Beautiful Garden Landscapes

Would you like some help getting your garden growing at home this spring to help you offset your food costs? Looking for ideas on how to utilize space(s) where you can grow food for your family? 

Complete this Be Well Garden form and tell me more about your space, ideas, experience, and  how I can support you.  Then, I will provide you with FREE garden support, starting with a  up to a 30 minute phone call, and email follow-ups, to encourage you to  plant a garden using space in creative and innovative ways.  Once you've started and you have a garden question, use this form and I will try to help you. Your photos and what you harvest is the evidence that will help me show the impact of this collective action. Please  fill out this short garden harvest feedback form when you collect produce from your garden. 

For some of you, the infrastructure is in place and you just need help designing and planting your garden. For others you are starting from scratch. Wherever you are starting from, you can have pretty amazing results with very little time, effort, and cost. I want to equip you with information to make you more successful so you can share what you know & grow with others.  I may have seeds and seedling I can also make available to you if you are willing to pay the shipping and materials; seeds, irrigation, parts or other costs.  

Supporting your needs

My goal is to help enable your success in designing and planting a garden.  If you have a successful experience you are more likely to continue gardening and enjoy it, For me, gardening gives me a sense of place and an opportunity to witness growth through the lifecycle of plants while growing food I can eat and share.  To start, I will set-up a 30 min. phone or virtual meetings, then follow-up with emails. I am also a mom, and teach part-time, so those roles come first, but I will do my best to support your success.  I can support up to four garden conferences per day, complete the Be Well Garden Form to schedule your conference.

No experience needed

Gardening isn't that hard. Now is a perfect time to try something new and create something that will save you money and feed you in the coming months. As you share your garden story with me and document your progress you will find that you know more than you think and telling about what you are observing will bring a familiarity that makes it easier to understand and learn from. I've learned through doing, reading, and asking other with experience questions. 

Although I am from Iowa, I didn't grow up on a farm. My dad was a builder and mom was a teacher. I went to UNI and studied art education, moved to California to compete as a beach volleyball player. I have completed a MA Education at UCLA and  MS Nutrition Education at Hawthorne University. I have been a public high school teacher for 20 years and taught, PE, Art, Health, Life Skills, Food Science, Foods Nutrition, and served as a Title I Coordinator. I have also coached volleyball at all levels and still love to play. 

I only started learning about gardening when I struggled connecting students  to a deeper connection of making healthy choices and actions. My background isn't based in agriculture, I'm not a scientist, and you probably have other local resources that are more knowledgable then me. That said, I learn from failures and continued to build that into successful gardens. I have coordinated an acre of gardens at my school for over 10 years. All my students have a garden they care for weekly. This outdoor learn-scape brings so many things that the classroom can't.  I want you to be successful in growing your own food, help you learn from my mistakes and enjoy getting to back to your roots.

Irrigation

Watering always seems to be a challenge. It's hard to be precise, especially when your starting out.  Currently I am using only outdoor spaces and installing Responsive Drip Irrigation. This is a drip tape the reacts with the plants chemistry when it emits exudates when looking for water and nutrients and that's when the tape releases water. So it gets watered when the plants need it, not when you decide. It's easy to install and not expensive. It runs off a very low PSI,(1-4) so a rain barrel works as your water source. I've put in several different kids of systems and this is a set it and forget it type of system that reduces worry about plants drying out. 

Garden to Table

I am working on building this website while I am helping you. My aim is to fill it with important information that will help you trouble shoot issues along the way and learn the best ways to harvest, clean, and store your produce once you've grown it. 

We can earn a lot from each other so as you send me feedback about what is happening I will be updating this site so we can all learn together. My goal is to see how much collective influence we can have in growing and enjoying the food we eat. So please share with me often using this harvest form.

As a teacher and understand that we all have different levels of comfort sharing things online. If you are open to it, I will share your ideas, and photos on this site. I will always ask for your permission to publish your contributions before it goes live. 

I have been working on this idea since I wrote my thesis back in 2014. It's a little dated but, I linked it here if you want to see it Be Well Nutrition Education Program.  

This is the trailer to the Uni Project that Nutribullet designed, funded and filmed with us, the full video is on the "why this matters" page.

 Examples