The Gardenerd: Grow Your Own Organic

Oh, wait . . . we already live in that world. But Christy Wilhelmi, the self-styled “Gardenerd,” has an answer that could work for just about any­one fight­ing the good fight: Grow your own. And she’s out to do every­thing she can to help you do that.

“I think we’ve got­ten very detached from our food source,” Christy told Organic Connections. “The more I found out about where my food came from, the more I felt like I needed to con­trol it. I think that, espe­cially with the big agribusi­ness com­pa­nies becom­ing more and more dom­i­nant in our food sys­tems, we need to take some of that power back. The more we grow our own, the bet­ter it is for us.”

And con­trol she has given us. Her Gardenerd web­site offers con­stantly updated advice, videos, rec­om­mended prod­ucts, and instruc­tion for peo­ple just get­ting into the home organic gar­den­ing game or for those who have been at it for years. For Los Angeles res­i­dents, she also offers classes and even con­sult­ing and gar­den design. The bot­tom line is that there’s some­thing for every­one. “Whether you’re a novice or a gar­den­ing vet­eran, there is a place for you here at Gardenerd.com,” Christy said.

The term nerd in Gardenerd is obvi­ously used in a com­pli­men­tary way—and also imparts the fact that it takes a lit­tle sense of humor to suc­ceed as a gar­dener. “When I was a kid, ‘nerds’ were not looked upon as a cool or fun thing,” said Christy. “Now peo­ple really iden­tify with being nerds about gar­den­ing, and there’s a fun asso­ci­ated with it and a sense of humor. You have to laugh at your mis­takes, because you can’t gar­den per­fectly, you really can’t. I think you learn from your mis­takes, and I tell my stu­dents that the best way to learn how to gar­den is to gar­den. You have this feel­ing of adven­ture and a will­ing­ness to laugh at your­self when you screw up. It’s a lot more fun.”

But despite every­thing, Christy has observed that once peo­ple start, they can’t seem to stop. “People get really addicted,” she said. “They start out a lit­tle scared, a lit­tle ner­vous, not know­ing what to do. But as soon as they begin plant­ing things in the ground they get so excited. It’s like some­body just kicked open a door for them to this whole new world. I love watch­ing that happen.”

Christy had a cou­ple of pas­sions that led her to cre­ate this busi­ness: she always had a love of gar­den­ing, and she had a life pur­pose to help peo­ple. Then one day it all coa­lesced. “It just kind of came together. I lit­er­ally woke up one morn­ing and said, ‘Gardenerds! Oh my God, that’s what it is!’ So it seemed to com­bine the two things really well.”

The busi­ness began with the cre­ation of the Gardenerd logo and a sin­gle Web page. From there, she expanded the web­site to include a blog so that she could inter­act with vis­i­tors and answer ques­tions, as well as doc­u­ment her own expe­ri­ences. “It kept grow­ing, and it also became an online resource where peo­ple can find good organic seed com­pa­nies, books that favor organic prac­tices, and orga­ni­za­tions that sup­port that kind of lifestyle—it’s all in one place.”

Click any image above to see a larger version.

In 2008, Christy added con­sult­ing and design to the offered ser­vices, quit her day job, and has never looked back.

Growing your own also addresses one of the prime com­plaints about organic veg­eta­bles: when you go to pur­chase them, they gen­er­ally have a con­sid­er­ably higher price than those at the aver­age gro­cery store. Christy advises any­one new to gar­den­ing to begin with pro­duce that will pay for itself quickly.

“Start with let­tuces. Things that grow very eas­ily and can be planted in a really small space are your own salad greens. You can likely pay $10 a pound for lit­tle cute baby gourmet organic salad mixes—but you can grow eight heads of let­tuce in two square feet. You pick the out­side leaves and you can har­vest that same bunch of let­tuces over about three months. It’s so sat­is­fy­ing and extremely sim­ple to start with, for begin­ning gardeners.”

Christy def­i­nitely has plans for Gardenerd.com to become an increas­ingly help­ful resource. “Objectives for the future involve expand­ing Gardenerd and the com­mu­nity that we’ve cre­ated online to have even more resources avail­able,” she said. “We’re also devel­op­ing soft­ware that will help peo­ple plan their gar­dens more eas­ily. And then we’d like to get into assist­ing com­mer­cial devel­op­ers to cre­ate gar­dens in the cen­ter of their properties.”

So if you know some­one who can’t fig­ure out how to begin a gar­den, or per­haps just needs some help along the way, send them by Gardenerd.com. It’s a great resource.