Before + After: Totally Boise

On the day I planted out this new turnkey kitchen garden, I experienced one of those “totally Boise” moments that I’ve grown accustomed to in the last few years. Justin, the talented metal artist who created the trellises you see pictured here, drove from Kuna to my client’s house in West Boise. While he carried the trellises to the backyard, he told me he grew up in that exact subdivision. When he met my client, they figured out that he went to school with one of her daughters. It was a moment that I’ve witnessed so often in this town, even as it grows. There are connections everywhere.

Pictured: The first set of locally made trellises installed in West Boise's newest kitchen garden. Swipe to see what our client was gardening in before these beds were installed.

Connection is an extremely important part of my life. I seek it in everything I do. That’s one of the reasons why I started this business, to help connect folks all over Boise to the food they can grow and the people who grow it for us every day. Growing food helps us connect to the earth, to ourselves and our communities. Food is a great connector.

When you buy locally, every dollar you spend has the power to generate 4x its value in your economy. For instance, if you buy a zucchini at the large-chain grocery store, the dollar you spend gets split into so many pieces from the store owner and its employees, the produce distributor and its employees, the freight delivery and its employees and so on, that the actual farmer who grew that zucchini makes pennies on the dollar. If you buy that zucchini from a local farmer who actually grew it, they take that whole dollar. They can then re-invest it in their employees or turn around and spend it on equipment from a local supplier or on lunch with their families at a nearby restaurant, which then multiplies that dollar even further.

When you spend locally, the value of your dollar expands rather than contracts. That’s why I focus so much on sourcing my materials locally. The garden I’m going to show you today is my very first garden sourced with 100% local materials. This has been a goal of mine since I started creating kitchen gardens, and I had no idea how difficult it would be to achieve. It was easy enough to find a local maker for my raised beds and a local soil yard for the mix we plant with, but the trellises and structures for my gardens has been a challenge from the word go.

I started by ordering trellises from a wholesale gardeners supply company on the east coast, but as materials became harder to come by and shipping containers got stuck in the Suez Canal, I realized this wasn’t sustainable. Plus, it didn’t sit right with me that the most expensive part of my gardens had dollars that were hardly being distributed to the people who made them. They were split between the manufacturer, the distributor, the freight companies, so that the person who actual had their hands on this trellis was probably the one least paid for it.

Putting together a manufactured trellis from overseas

When the trellises I was ordering started to have estimated arrival dates 6 weeks after I needed them, I had to seek local makers out of necessity. What good was a tomato trellis that arrived after the tomato vines were already 10 feet long? Most of the metal workers I spoke to didn’t have the equipment to bend the metal into an arch, some of them blew me off after setting in-person meetings, others were simply too expensive. I was willing to lose some margin on the trellises, but they needed to be affordable for my clients who were already spending money on a premium quality garden.

Local trellises, river rock, pavers, cedar beds, soil mix, plants and irrigation parts all made or installed by small business owners in Boise.

Another small business owner I’ve been connecting with a lot on Instagram posted about a custom metal structure she commissioned. She had great things to say about Justin, and when I reached out, he was responsive, enthusiastic and creative. What’s more, he recently went out on his own as an independent metal artist. His pricing was appropriate, and the work he’s been doing is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

On of my favorite parts of this business has been to create relationships with my vendors. It’s something I loved when I was a farmers market manager in Atlanta, and it helps me keep going on the hard days. I realize that supporting local businesses costs more money. It might not be the best thing for my business’ margins, but it brings me a lot of joy, which has a value all its own. The people who have a hand in building these gardens have stories all their own. When they build something for my clients, I feel confident that all of the love that goes into these gardens are a key component in their success.

If you want to learn more about our process when it comes to turnkey and a la carte kitchen gardens, I hope you’ll send me a note. Or, if you’re looking for a beautiful custom garden structure for your space, let’s design one together. Click the button below to reach out.