Gardening lessons at home in Glen Ridge, NJ

Gardening in the shade

Under the oaks and maples of Glen Ridge, tomatoes rarely get enough sun. Hostas, ferns, hellebores and impatiens do much better. A gardener can walk the yard with your parent, figure out where the light actually falls through the day, and suggest what will thrive where.

If there is a sunny patch, maybe along the driveway or at the front of the house, that's where the raised bed or the pots of herbs go. Gardeners are good at finding the one spot that gets six hours of sun.

Shade gardening also has its own quiet rewards. A woodland bed with ferns and a few spring bulbs needs less watering than a sunny vegetable patch, which matters in August when hauling a hose across the yard is hard work.

Freeman Gardens

Freeman Gardens, at Maolis and Hawthorne Avenues, is run and kept up by resident volunteers rather than the borough, and it's a good example of what dedicated amateurs can grow in this part of New Jersey. A walk through gives you ideas you can scale down to a few pots on a porch.

Some gardeners like to visit with a student first, look at what's blooming, take some photos, and then plan the home garden around what your parent liked best.

Adapted for knees and backs

Kneeling on hard ground is often the first thing to go. Gardeners work around it with raised beds built to sitting height, containers on stands, a padded garden seat, long-handled tools, and a lot of potting done at a table on the porch.

The weekly visit might be planting in May, deadheading in July, dividing perennials in September and bulbs in October. In winter, many families move to houseplants and seed starting on a sunny windowsill, so the habit doesn't stop.

Gardeners also teach. Why a plant is wilting, when to cut back the hydrangeas, how to tell a weed from a seedling. Over a season, your parent picks up enough to keep things going between visits.

Booking and cost

Gardeners set their own rate between $50 and $150 an hour, and visits are 1, 1.5 or 2 hours. Planting days in spring often need the longer visits. Ask in a message what they bring and if you should buy plants and soil ahead. After each visit, the gardener writes a short note about what was planted and what needs watering, which helps when you live out of town and want to ask about it on the phone.