We offer garden consulting in Bethel Park, Allegheny County — $85–$130 for an in-person visit that produces a hand-drawn layout, written plant list, and regional timing guide for your last frost zone. Rolling to moderately steep South Hills terrain. Every Bethel Park property has its own set of constraints, and the plan we put together reflects them.
A lot of vegetable gardening content is written for climates that are nothing like ours. Here in western Pennsylvania, our last frost date is typically May 1 to 10 around Pittsburgh — that's later than most of the country, and it compresses the warm-season growing window considerably. Tomatoes and peppers go in after that date. Raised beds help because they warm up two to three weeks faster than in-ground soil in spring, which can genuinely extend your season at this latitude. Across the service territory, conditions vary meaningfully: the WV panhandle runs similar to Pittsburgh — zone 6a to 6b — while central Ohio typically sees its last frost around April 25 to May 5. Move into central Indiana and you're looking at April 15 to 25; southern Indiana can be as early as April 5 to 15, which opens the door to warmer-season crops with a longer run. What thrives in zone 6 with minimal struggle: tomatoes (with the right variety timing), winter squash, beans, kale, garlic. What you'll fight every year: melons unless conditions cooperate. We also connect customers who want to grow their own food with our community plant pickup program, where you can source transplants ready to go in the ground at exactly the right time for this region.
For Bethel Park specifically: silt loam to clay subsoil. Established neighborhoods from the 1950s-1970s have accumulated organic matter from long turf history. Some hillside lots have erosion issues where grades are steep and turf is thin or shaded out.
After the initial consultation, a follow-up visit is available — typically scheduled two to three weeks into the season, when the real questions start showing up. We also stay available for shorter questions through the growing season. For customers who want ongoing support, the full garden plan package includes a revisit built in. Our community plant pickup program is another touchpoint: many consulting customers source their transplants through us, which means we can make sure the plant list we built together is exactly what shows up ready to go in the ground.
When we walk onto a new site, we're reading a lot at once. Where is the sun coming from and what's blocking it — a fence, a roofline, a tree on the neighbor's property that didn't leaf out yet when you checked in April? We look at the ground: does it drain or does it pool after rain? Is the soil clay-heavy, sandy, or somewhere in between? We're also asking a lot of questions, because the physical conditions only tell half the story. We want to know what you actually cook, whether you have deer pressure in the neighborhood, how much time per week you can realistically put into this. Those answers change the plant list and the layout. We've seen too many first gardens fail not because of bad soil or bad luck but because someone planted twelve zucchini plants for two people, or put tomatoes in a spot that looks sunny in the morning but gets shade by noon. The sketch we put together on-site reflects everything we find — not a template, but a plan drawn around what's actually there.
An initial garden consultation — site visit, sun assessment, layout sketch, plant list, and timing guide — runs $85 to $130. If you want a full garden plan with a follow-up visit included, that package is $225 to $375 depending on site complexity and plan scope. Remote consultations by phone or video are available at $50 to $75 per hour.
Yes — Garden Soon provides in-person garden consulting in Bethel Park. We come to your property, walk the site together, and produce a plan specific to your conditions. Call (724) 201-9484 or use the contact form to schedule.
We start by walking the yard together and mapping where direct sun actually falls through the day — that determines where beds can go and what will produce well. Rolling to moderately steep South Hills terrain. From there we sketch a layout on paper during the visit and put together a written plant list matched to your conditions and what you want to grow in Bethel Park.
The main difference is that we're looking at your site, not a general situation. A YouTube video can explain what raised beds are and why they work; it cannot tell you that the south-facing wall of your house actually gets cut off by tree shade by 1pm, which changes everything about where your beds should go. Most online gardening content is also written for zone 7 or 8, or averaged across the whole country, which means the frost dates, timing, and crop recommendations are wrong for zone 6 in western Pennsylvania or Ohio. We answer the site-specific questions that general content can't.
Yes — and in zone 6, there's more season to work with than most people assume. Cool-season crops like lettuce, spinach, kale, peas, and radishes can go in the ground four to six weeks before last frost, which in western Pennsylvania means starting in March. With succession planting — putting in a short row of lettuce every two weeks rather than all at once — you can have continuous harvests rather than a single glut. In fall, many of those same crops can go back in after summer heat breaks, and cold frames or row cover can push the harvest window into November and beyond.
Yes, and a site visit is especially useful in a heavily shaded yard because the actual usable light is almost always different from what it looks like to the eye. We map sun through the day across different spots in the yard — sometimes there's a window of direct light that opens up the possibility of a small productive bed that isn't obvious at first. Where true deep shade exists, we're honest about what it can and can't support, and we can talk through alternatives like containers moved to a brighter location or crops that genuinely perform on four hours of light.
Customers who do a garden consultation in Bethel Park often connect with these other services:
Garden Soon
Licensed & insured in PA · Rated 4.8★ on Google
Providing Vegetable Garden Design in Bethel Park, PA and surrounding areas.