Backyard Entreprenuer^TM

 Backyard Botanist

Daisies are like sunshine to the ground. -- Drew Barrymore

Make money as an entrepreneur working at home with your love of plants, flowers, shrubs, seeds, and botanical products you can make from what you grow.

Make Plant Identification Charts and Books     

Vegetables and herbs are covered on our Backyard Gardener page. This page is for flowers and shrubs. Have you really ever noticed all the different kinds of flowers that grow all around you?  You have to get outside and discover all the plants and flowers nature has created for your enjoyment.  Notice the differences.  Learn the scientific names as well as the common names.  Start a flower collection.  Sketch them.  Photograph them.  Make a book of pressed flowers. Label with scientific names.  Sell it all for profit so that others can identify plants.

Design a yard full of plants and flowers that will attract birds to your yard.  Which plants are poisonous?  Get out into your big backyard and discover a new world all around you.

 Sell Plants and Seeds

Once you know a few things, start a business.  It does not have to be too fancy just to start out.  Folks will understand.  Call your business the "Beginning Botanist Business".  Sell the plants that you propagate.  Sell seeds that you have packaged into personalized packets.

Have a garage sale where you just sell your plants.  Word of mouth and people will keep coming back.  Make some business cards to tack up around town. People love flowers. Sell to local shops.

Grow sunflowers, put the seeds into the seed packets you decorate, and sell.  Seed packets are so easy to mail or sell at local shops, right on the front counter.

Sell dish gardens.  Use old china or anything that you can find at garage sales that is different and unusual.  Just because these are called "dish gardens" does not mean that it has to be placed in an actual "dish".  These are more like "table top" gardens.  Kids can make and sell these.  Every teacher needs one for his/her desk.  So do administrators.  Every downtown office needs them, too. Set them out at checkout counters for customers to buy as they check out at every retail shop in town.  Add a few personal touches like a couple of pencils  or some nail polish for a girlfriend.  Add fairies, tiny bridges, cottages, and all kinds of whimsical elements. Create a tiny village -- maybe even a replica of part of your town.

The most casual bouquet from one's garden is just as beautiful as a formal arrangement from a florist shop.  A plant that you started from a larger plant and planted in a pretty pot is just as appreciated as one bought from a store.  Make clever pots from discarded containers.  Buy coffee or tea cups, for instance, to set your little flower pot into.

Turn a hobby with bonsai trees into a profitable business.  Hang tiny dollar signs from a little tree and create a money tree.

Hang tiny pi symbols from the limbs along with a little partridge for a "partridge in a pi tree" gift for a math teacher. Find other appropriate decorations for your trees for various businesses. Customers set these on his/her desk at work as  motivation.  Don't forget to sell the real bonsai money plant tree. More about that on our home page.

Topiary is a beautiful art form that can make you a profit. Create the frames and begin the process.  Sell your beautiful designs or make specific ones for your customers.  These can be tiny to middle size.

While you are at it, start your own backyard topiary garden - grow your own plants or import some. In ten years or so, these will be beautiful.   Charge a fee then for your retirement income.  Folks will bring their children for Christmas pictures and there is another source of income for you.

Maintain Plants

Grow some beautiful hanging baskets, take picutes, take these pictures to resturant and shops.  See if you can sell your plants to these establishment.  Hire yourself out to maintain the beauty of these plants in-store.

Rent Plants

Rent your beautiful plants for decorations for parties and weddings. Some homeowners may wish to try your plants out for a few weeks just to see if they like that particular plant.  If they do, then you can sell some to them.

 Paint Plant and Flower Designs

Draw flowers and plants on homemade seed packets, on greeting cards, and on rocks.  Draw vines and flowers on backyard fences and on the side of your house.  Build a business around your love of art and flowers.  Paint walls of buildings in town.  Beat the grafitti artists to the punch.

Don't buy ivy wallpaper, draw the designs yourself directly onto the walls.  Hire your talents out to all the neighbors.

Make patterns for all kinds of plants and flowers to sell so that others can have plants, flowers, and vines all over their walls. Bring the backyard inside.  Paint your flower designs on curtains and lampshades.  There are really not many surfaces where you cannot paint your flower designs.

Create greeting cards with flowers glued to the front.  We know someone with a line of garden cards called "Gards^TM" .  Find your own name and create your own line of cards. Mount flowers and frame them.  Create a Gardening Journal and calendars to sell with your illustrations. Make with homemade paper.  See our homemade paper page for more ideas.

Begin a Garden Club

If you do not have a garden club, you need one.  You need one for children as well as adults.  Teach flower arranging.  Hold contests.  Meet each month and afterwards offer plants and flower arrangements for sell to the public.  Advertise your metings and plant sales. Collect dues to pay your expenses and salary.

Make, Sell, and Carve Botany-for-the-Body Soaps

There are lots of instructions and recipes online for making soap.  After wrapping each bar of soap in homemade paper, tie a sprig from your garden on it for a special touch.  An extra demension to your soap making art, is the art of carving soap.  Learn it, sell it, and teach it.

Sell Wheatgrass and Barley Grass Seeds

Some folks believe in the nutritional benefits of these two grasses, wheatgrass and barley grass, for people and pet birds.  Research the health benefits and find out for yourself how you feel about getting started in the health food field.  Sell seeds or kits. Some believe that there is more benefit from the grasses if grown in the full sun for a longer period of time instead of under lights, very quickly, as is usually done.

Make and Sell Flower Beds

Turn old iron beds into flower beds. Find these beds at garage sales or antique stores.  This headboard cost us $5 at a garage sale -- already painted. Make your own with your metal working skills.  See our page on metal art for more ideas.

Sell Cacti Dish Gardens

Cacti come in all kinds of beautiful shapes and sizes.  Slow growing and using little water these plants are perfectly suited for dish gardens.  Add small rocks and tiny desert decorations to complete the garden.

You have to turn off the TV and get outside.  There's money in that backyard of yours.  May your garden and your pocket book grow proportionally.

Sell Wildflower Seed Packets

Lady Bird Johnson put wildflowers on the map.  Every home -- especially in Texas -- needs a wildflower garden.  Sell the seeds.  Find a special niche here with the instructions you include.  Sketch out the garden. 

Sell Dried Flower Garden Seeds

Your customers can enjoy their garden year long if they plant flowers that are easily dried to use as arrangements inside througout the winter.  Help them figure out how and which ones are best.  Research the strawflower, statice, blue salvia, and baby's breath for starters.

© Backyard Entrepreneur^TM 2007

Here are some resources to get you started.

Links

Books -- Bonsai

Books -- Flower Arranging

Books -- Flower Seeds

Books -- Healing Plants

Books -- Gardening

Books -- Popourri

Books -- Pressed Flowers

Books -- Soap Carving

Books -- Soap Making

Books -- Topiary

Clip Art for your Websites and Newsletters

Free Clipart and Web Graphics
A huge collection of totally free clipart! No pop ups, trick links or registration required. Just high quality images!

Equipment

How To

How to make soap

How to Start and Grow Bonsai Trees

How to start a topiary tree business

Wheat and Barley Grasses

Magazines 

Marketing

Make money selling plants you grow: Virtual Seed

Organizations

Join an organization:  Botanical Society of America

Resources and information

Learn something new:  University of British Columbia

Learn even more:  University of California Botanical Garden

Access resources : National Biological Information Infrastucture

Go to the Library:  National Agricultural Library

Learn about widlflowers:  from the Texas Hill Country

Why study plants:  from University of Oregon

Native plants:  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Get involved with native plants: Wild Ones

Garden Center Nursery -- Exotic flowers, plants, shrubs, garden tools, and accessories. Garden and patio furniture, bonsai trees, water fountains. Visit Garden Center Showplace, everything for your garden under one roof.

Seeds