Yes, Garden Soon offers garden consulting in Squirrel Hill — $85–$130 for the initial consultation, which includes walking the yard together, mapping the light, and producing a plan specific to your conditions. Plateau-like East End neighborhood with moderate grade changes — less extreme than Pittsburgh's west and south hillside neighborhoods. We build every garden plan in Squirrel Hill around what we actually find on site, not a generic template.
When we show up for a consultation, the first thing we do is walk the whole yard with you. We're looking at sun — specifically how many hours of direct light each potential garden spot actually gets, because that single factor determines almost everything. Six hours or more is what tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers need to produce well; leafy greens and herbs can manage on four to five. We ask what you want to grow, what your family actually eats, how much time you realistically want to put in, and whether you're thinking in-ground or raised beds. From there we sketch a layout on paper right there on site — bed dimensions, orientation, what goes where, spacing. We put together a plant list that fits both your conditions and your goals. We talk through timing: when to direct-sow, when to transplant, what goes in the ground in March versus what has to wait until after last frost. You walk away from a session with a sketch, a list, and a plan you can actually follow.
For Squirrel Hill specifically: east End Pittsburgh soils with significant homeowner investment over generations. Better organic matter and topsoil quality than many Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Many properties have active kitchen gardens and intensively maintained landscape beds that have benefited from years of soil amendment.
A standard consultation includes the full site visit — sun assessment, drainage review, soil evaluation — plus a hand-drawn layout sketch, a plant list matched to your specific conditions and goals, a timing guide for your last frost zone, and soil amendment recommendations. If you're building raised beds, we walk through what to fill them with. The session runs about an hour and a half to two hours on site, and we cover everything you need to actually put a garden in the ground with confidence.
Before: you want to grow your own food. Maybe you've thought about it for years, or tried it once and it didn't go well. You have a yard, some ambition, and a lot of unanswered questions — where exactly to put beds, what soil to use, what will realistically grow in your conditions, and when to plant what. During: we come out, walk the site with you, map the sun, talk through what you want to grow and what your yard can support. We sketch a layout on paper, put together a plant list with varieties suited to this region, and work through the timing so you know what to start in late winter, what goes in the ground in early spring, and what has to wait until after last frost. We talk soil mix if you're doing raised beds — roughly equal parts compost, topsoil, and perlite or vermiculite for drainage and air. After: you have a paper sketch of your garden, a written plant list, timing notes, and soil recommendations. You have a plan you can hand to someone at the garden center and actually execute. And if questions come up six weeks in, a follow-up visit is available.
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 Squirrel Hill. 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. Plateau-like East End neighborhood with moderate grade changes — less extreme than Pittsburgh's west and south hillside neighborhoods. 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 Squirrel Hill.
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 Squirrel Hill often connect with these other services:
Garden Soon
Licensed & insured in PA · Rated 4.8★ on Google
Providing Vegetable Garden Design in Squirrel Hill, PA and surrounding areas.