Mark hartley |

If you make your neighbor’s garden beautiful, will you earn more income than he does?

The work we do outside in our gardens is, for most of us, a labor of love. But some of us do turn this love into a full-time gig. If you decide to turn your hobby into a full time profession, the question then becomes: will my love of landscaping pay the bills or am I just going to wind up doing it for love.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down landscaping services into the category of “landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping.” The latter two careers can very logically make one think of young males earning cash for the summer by cutting lawns, or those guys who steer a little too close as you’re teeing off at the local golf course. The distinction here is that the careers tracked by the federal agency are “first-line supervisors” who answer “inquiries from potential customers regarding methods, material, and price ranges; and preparing estimates according to labor, material, and machine costs.”

I have a feeling that even the amateurs among us do these first-line supervisor services quite voluntarily with our neighbors.

The BLS statistically tracks the more manual labor aspects of groundskeeping in a separate category. So the feds see the distinction too. Landscape architects are yet another professional category (but since their training is more formalized, the BLS statistics for that occupation is not considered below).

Texas ranks third in the country in employing these landscaping supervisors (see map below), trailing only California and Florida. Landscaping is a big business in Texas, employing more than 6,800 first-line supervisors.

As mentioned above, I was wondering how the income earned by landscaping supervisors stacked up against the median household income in the Texas cities listed below. The percentages beside each city indicate how much below or above the median household income that the income of landscaping supervisors are. The higher the percentage, the better the chance that the income is more than just a labor of love.

As you can see, the average landscaping supervisor earns less than city’s median household income in 11 of the 17 Texas cities above. The percentage under the median in Corpus Christi, Houston, El Paso, and San Antonio is slight, and remember that the median household income can, and often does, involve multiple incomes.

So it can be a good living supervising the makeover of an urban home garden that transforms the beauty of a neighborhood.

As for College Station and Beaumont, the financial incentive appears to be even higher. I think we need to petition Jay to show us some of the gardens in College Station and Beaumont!

EarthBox, Inc., the manufacturer of gardening boxes, touted its community outreach efforts last week, providing examples of how schools and senior citizen groups are discovering the joys of gardening in unlikely locations such as roofs, parking lots, and playgrounds.

Students at a Pennsylvania elementary school grow enough in their Eartbox gardens to feed the entire school on World Food Day each year.

Molly Philbin, the education director for EarthBox, explained the company’s strategy in a press statement: “Gardening can teach everything from science to nutrition while being fun and rewarding at the same time. And since our EarthBox® container gardening system provides ideal growing conditions without the need to dig or weed, groups find that they can enjoy great yields with very little effort.”

EarthBox produces large yields of high quality vegetables with much less work

The rectangular, tub-like containers produced by EarthBox, Inc. features a self-watering reservoir at the bottom of its boxes to enhance “maintenance-free” aspects of gardening.

While purists desire hands-on maintenance of gardens, EarthBox is appealing to groups who lack the time to devote to every aspect of gardening, as well as limited physical skills.

EarthBox is not just for vegetables. These self contained gardens grow beautiful flowers as well

For example, an EarthBox garden was designed for senior residents in Florida who are confined to wheelchairs. The engineer behind the design said the garden “offers them a place where they can grow fresh vegetables, socialize, and relax.”

EarthBox also presented the example of young children ages three to five participating in a nutrition club hosted by a Tampa, Fla., community college. The EarthBox garden focuses on herbs, and the kids tend to the garden, pick the herbs, and learn about the various qualities of the herbs. The club has a weekly “smelling party,” and its president said the young gardeners have a “blast with this weekly activity.”

EarthBox allows you to grow big, beautiful tomatoes right outside your door

EarthBox also cited the examples of scouting organizations for both boys and girls using the convenient gardens to earn badges.

Again, the basins produced by EarthBox are not yielding the type of crop output that most gardeners are trying to achieve. But the self-container market continues to reach its demographic niche, and EarthBox has demonstrated that its products successfully kindle interest in gardening among school-based groups, as well as rekindle interest among our seniors.

The company, which was started in 1994, develops “sustainable” container garden systems for all secondary grade levels in schools. With the national interest in combating obesity among schoolchildren, this type of gardening helps foster to concept of a healthier lifestyle as a result of what’s planted in the garden.