Garden Soon's garden consulting service is available in Castle Shannon, Allegheny County at $85–$130 for an initial site visit. Moderately rolling South Hills terrain. That's exactly the kind of site-specific detail that shapes what we recommend for bed placement, crop selection, and planting timing in Castle Shannon.
YouTube can teach you how raised beds work in general. What it cannot tell you is that the spot on the south side of your house actually only gets four hours of direct sun because the neighbor's oak canopy cuts it off by early afternoon — which we'll catch in twenty minutes of watching the light move. Generic gardening advice is usually written for zone 7 or 8, or averaged across the whole country, which means the timing information is wrong for western Pennsylvania, wrong for the WV panhandle, wrong for central Ohio. When we come to your site, we're looking at your specific drainage situation, your soil texture, whether you have a frost pocket at the base of that slope, how your water access affects where it makes sense to put beds. We're asking questions no algorithm asks: what's your water source, how far are you willing to carry a hose, do you have dogs? We've also seen the mistakes that get made repeatedly in this region — the biggest one being planting warm-season crops too early, which one late frost can wipe out entirely. Site-specific, in-person assessment gets you answers tuned to your actual conditions.
For Castle Shannon specifically: silt loam to clay subsoil. Mid-century development era often stripped topsoil, though long turf history has rebuilt organic matter on established lots. Some hillside properties have erosion-thinned soil where slopes are steep.
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.
The initial consultation ($85–$130) covers a full site visit of one and a half to two hours, sun and drainage assessment, a hand-drawn layout sketch, a written plant list with region-appropriate varieties, timing guidance for your last frost zone, and soil amendment recommendations. You walk away with documents in hand. The full garden plan with follow-up ($225–$375) includes everything in the initial consultation plus a more detailed written design plan and a second site visit two to three weeks later, when questions have had time to develop. If you've already had a consultation and just need us back for a specific issue or a season check-in, a standalone follow-up visit is $65 to $95 for an hour on site. Remote consultations — phone or video, useful for off-season planning or customers outside our regular service area — are $50 to $75 per hour. All pricing is honest and upfront; we discuss scope on the initial call before anything is scheduled.
Yes — Garden Soon provides in-person garden consulting in Castle Shannon. 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. Moderately rolling 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 Castle Shannon.
Yes — hillside gardens are common in Pittsburgh and they're very solvable with the right approach. Terraced raised beds built into a slope can turn a site that seems impossible into productive growing space, and the elevated construction often means excellent drainage and sun exposure. We'd look at the grade, the sun angle, how water moves across the slope, and what structural approach makes sense — whether that's stacked stone, timber framing, or another method — and build a layout around what will actually work on that specific hillside.
An initial consultation — the site visit, sun assessment, layout sketch, plant list, and timing guide — runs $85 to $130. A full garden plan with a follow-up visit is $225 to $375. Stand-alone follow-up visits are $65 to $95 per hour, and remote consultations by phone or video are $50 to $75 per hour. We go over the right option for your situation on the initial call before anything is scheduled.
You don't need to prepare much — just have the space accessible so we can walk it together. It helps to think ahead of time about what you'd most like to grow and roughly how much time per week you want to put into the garden. If you know where your water source is and whether you've had any drainage issues in that area, mention it when we talk. Everything else we figure out when we get there.
Customers who do a garden consultation in Castle Shannon often connect with these other services:
Garden Soon
Licensed & insured in PA · Rated 4.8★ on Google
Providing Vegetable Garden Design in Castle Shannon, PA and surrounding areas.