Why not? It is truly the cutting edge of the environmental movement. Don’t you see plants everywhere? House plants, office plants, landscaping around your home, in and around office buildings, atriums, terrariums, cactus gardens, vertical walls in office building lobbies, and company lobbies. Roof gardens, vertical gardens on buildings, aquatic plants, reforestations, orchards, farming, permaculture, and on and on.
Imagine planting vertical gardens on the exterior walls of buildings, that are really a living painting – organic art! These vertical gardens can be planted with ornamentals (for looks), or they can be planted with fruit bearing plants and vegetables. Interior plantscaping, and exterior landscaping are the most “green” jobs you could do!
Why do I bring this up?
I have been in the landscape(exterior) and plantscape(interior) business for 37 years and have made the income level of many doctors and lawyers. Why? Not because I work 24/7. I work smart and I am in a profession that supplies people with what they want – an esthetically pleasing environment. Also I am in a “growing” business that portends the future, where people will began installing eatable landscapes around their homes and businesses, and on their wall and roof surfaces. I am not talking about the little vegetable garden on the side of someone’s home, this will be an organic presence around, on and above people’s homes, where they will grow their own food.
No more frequent trips to the market for the things you can grow! You will learn this knowledge and teach others to grow their gardens. Also, I see the filtering and use of “grey” water being used in gardens, as water becomes more scarce. Grey water being that from your kitchen, bathtubs and laundry rooms. You can also learn these processes, to help out your future clients and yourselves.
People’s budgets are being marginalized by high food costs, while they landscape their yards, and water plants that have no food value. Just that concept of a sustainable eatable landscape, translates into jobs and businesses for millions of people around the planet. USC is offering classes to become a “master gardener”, and a woman I know is making a good living maintaining the gardens of wealthy home owners around Los Angeles, and teaching others to grow their own.
There is a big market for putting in drip irrigation systems, or planting exterior plants in sub-irrigation planters, where you just fill up the reservoir and the plant drinks when and what amount it needs. In the area I live in, i.e., Los Angeles, people are growing their own food, year round. You can also teach your clients how to compost and recycle the nutrients from lawn, kitchen and garden greens. This process puts real organics back into the soil, making it a living breathing environment.
You can become a source of knowledge for your community!
Through technology, and specialization, our forefathers were drawn off of their land, and within one generation, all the knowledge accrued through thousands of years of cultivation are lost. My wife knows little about growing plants or farming, yet she left a Greek village when she was eight, where her family had been self-sustaining on their land for thousands of years(a Greek village above Sparta). We are those emigrant farmers who are stranded in cities, wondering how do we grow our own food again?
What I am suggesting to you is to reach inside your genes and re-connect with the power you have inside to re-vegetate your life, and those of your community. I suggest two things: Begin growing eatable plants at home. Then chose one of the many “green” avenues in the plant industry, and start taking classes and learn everything you can about your new profession! I started my plant business with a basket, scissors, and a water bucket – a $15.00 investment. By going around and asking businesses if they needed an interior plant service, I was able to start maintaining interior plants in corporations, and within months, I had a self-sustaining income.
Now re-read this a couple of times and close your eyes. Imagine yourself with your own “green business”, making great money, gaining many new clients and friends, and taking time off for great vacations(making sure the garden is being watered in your absence!). Using this new vision of your future, you can do it, and the first thing you can do today, is buy a small indoor plant and begin taking care of it. This will begin the process, as you reconnect to your vegetable nature. As you tend to your new friend, you begin reading and gaining as much information as you can. Set a goal to have your first client within 6 months….You are on your way!