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Read through this page for a whole-picture perspective on the Online Gardening School or use the following links to skip around, if you’re looking for specific information:
Growing a garden can change your life.
Or have you tried your hand at gardening, but felt disappointed with the results?
Have you always dreamed of growing a garden, but don’t know where to start?
Do you fantasize about tucking seeds into soil and reaping abundant harvests?
Now is the time to make these dreams come true.
Our online gardening classes are here to help.
The Online Gardening School will teach you how to grow bountiful and beautiful food, whether you’re gardening on your apartment balcony or you’ve got a quarter acre of sunny ground to work with.
In this age of global disaster and disconnect, growing a garden is a powerful act of positive change, both for yourself and your community.
Here’s what you receive in our online gardening classes:
- Unlimited, lifetime access
- Digestible, do-able video lessons
- Foundational and seasonal content
- Live mentorship
- Plus, start when you want and go at your own pace
What Our Online Gardening School Students Say
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Caitlin
Santa Clara, CA
Working Mom
“I had been dabbling in backyard gardening for a few years before this class found me at the perfect time. Learning from Chloe and Natalie is like having a friend/garden guru who is there whenever you need them. I LOVE THIS CLASS!”
Andy
Asheville, NC
Documentary Film Company Senior Impact Coordinator
“I feel like one year gardening with the Online Gardening School was comparable to probably a dozen years learning just by trial and error. I can’t recommend this class enough! “
Amrit
Bay Area, CA
Education Administrator
“I love that I have access to the Online Gardening School course content for life. As a working mom, my schedule doesn’t always allow for consistent engagement with gardening. Chloe and Natalie have created a judgment-free zone where no question is a bad one and everyone’s experience and success is celebrated.”
Holley
Knoxville, TN
Outdoor Educator
“The Online Gardening School is so helpful, personal, and wonderfully informal. I use the videos almost like I use my gardening reference books; constantly referring back to them for fresh ideas and guidance. Chloe and Natalie’s lessons are empowering, and they inspire me to grow and try new things!”
Take your food security into your own hands with our online gardening courses.
“The time has come to reclaim the stolen harvest and celebrate the growing and giving of good food as the highest gift and the most revolutionary act” – Dr. Vandana Shiva
Our online gardening courses offer masterful guidance for a range of experience levels.
The content is accessible to the total newbie and will set a solid foundation to get started in the garden. Our organic online gardening courses are also useful and practical for folks who have already grown a garden or helped out on a farm, but want to learn more—they provide insight, new techniques, and inspiration for the avid gardener who wants to dig deeper.
These online gardening classes cover all things related to organic gardening at home, from a holistic, permaculture-inspired perspective.
Indeed, The Online Gardening School not only gives you the foundations you need to get started, but also serves as your companion as you tend your garden throughout the seasons.
We offer step-by-step instructions for gardening during every month of the year and for growing each vegetable, plus we hold regular live Q&A sessions to provide mentorship and personalized guidance. You’ll also discover bonus classes to deepen your gardening prowess and your big-picture understanding of holistic food ecosystems. You decide which classes you access, and when.
The Online Gardening Classes are for anyone in the continental US (or similar climates).
Wild Abundance is based in the mountains of Southern Appalachia, but we’ve gardened all over the country and around the world: from the Pacific Northwest, to Arizona, New York, Northern California, Florida, Northeastern Brazil, and Spain. We’ve had students from all over the world participate in this class and get so much out of it.
Please note, if you live in the tropics or the desert, the techniques we share in The Online Gardening School may not be appropriate for your bioregion. Feel free to reach out to us at gardening@wildabundance.net to help determine if this program is a good fit.
There has never been a better time to start a garden than right now!
Knowing how to grow food is your human inheritance.
We live in a strange new world, where many people reside in cities and where the vast majority of our food is grown in monocultures on large, industrial farms. Even big organic farms can take the shape of factories, with little holistic engagement in the agroecological and social systems that they’re a part of. Most of us grew up with barely any understanding of where our food comes from, let alone the magical knowledge of how to grow it ourselves.
But no matter who you are, your ancestors had rich relationships with their food, whether they tended gardens or gathered sustenance from wild nature. Now is the time to reclaim this birthright and replenish the knowledge that is at the core of living in harmony on the earth.
Receive our expert gardening mentorship while learning through your own experience.
It may sound strange, but we’ve had many students who have worked on farms, yet don’t have the confidence to plant gardens of their own. In fact, there’s something very different about actually planning and planting a garden from scratch than being told exactly what to do and where.
The online gardening classes offered here give you the skills and tools you need to grow a garden for yourself, from the ground up, whether it’s 6’x6’ or 60’x60’. In other words, we give you guidance and support, but you’re in charge of making decisions and customizing your garden to fit your personal needs.
We’ve learned about soils, seeds, weeds, and gardening techniques all over the world, but you’re the world’s leading expert on your garden. Together, we’ll create a synergy that leads to success.
And don’t worry, we’ll be here to answer your questions and help you work through challenges. You’ll receive unlimited access to instructors via the online classroom, plus regular live Q&A sessions.
“I can’t say enough about how thrilled I’ve been to participate in the Online Gardening School. I’ve been so blown away by the content and the quality and timeliness of instructor response. I don’t think this kind of class exists anywhere else. You’d probably have to go to school for an agriculture degree and that’s a lot more money and time commitment. This course is an accessible way to explore the same content you’d find in a bigger and more expensive setting.”
—Gianna, NC
It’s time to taste the fruits — and vegetables — of your labor.
Wherever you are, on any device, you can watch the videos, ask questions, and access the written lessons.
Ready to Join?
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The core of the program is a series of foundational online gardening classes accompanied by seasonal lessons for each month of the year and in-depth guides to growing over 25 vegetables, berries, and herbs.
The videos and written lessons will teach you everything you need to know to break ground and start growing some serious food. You don’t have to complete all of the foundational lessons before getting started; instead, we encourage you to choose what feels most relevant to you and then explore the lessons further as your garden grows. Foundational classes include:
- What Your Garden Needs
- Starting A Garden from Grass
- How To Plant A Seed and Get It To Grow
- Holistic Garden Planning
- Basic and More Specialized Gardening Tools
- Seed Selection & Considerations
- Choosing Plant Starts
- Fertility & Fertilizers
- Pest Management
- Weeds & Weeding
- Water & Irrigation
- Soils 101
- And so much more…
Seasonal Online Gardening Classes Every Month of the Year
Monthly Video Classes
In addition to the foundational online gardening classes, you get access to monthly lessons that each include a set of video tutorials and written materials specifically tailored for that month. These feature an overview of the garden at that time of year, tours of our own gardens, and detailed guidance on the vegetables that are being planted, tended, and harvested.
Within this monthly content, we include tips on troubleshooting, managing fertility, weeding, pest management, cooking from the garden, and more. Additionally, we discuss edible weeds and cover crops in their own lessons.
You could grow a tomato like THIS!
We’ll show you how to grow over 25 vegetables, herbs, and berries in our online gardening classes.
You pick and choose which ones you want to grow—just a few or you can nerd out on all of them.
Please don’t pressure yourself to grow every single one (especially if you don’t like them or don’t have enough room)! The program is so ample because we want your palette of vegetables to feel abundant, whatever your particular taste and conditions.
Some favorites that you’ll be able to grow with the help of this course (depending on your climate) are:
- Tomatoes
- Broccoli
- Kale
- Cilantro
- Potatoes
- Sweet potatoes
- Beans
- Basil
- Garlic
- Cucumbers
- Melons
- Squash
- And so many more!
For a more complete list, check out the FAQs below.
Receive personalized mentorship from our team of experienced gardeners.
Along with the video and written lessons in our online gardening classes, you’ll be invited to our monthly live online Q&A sessions, where you can ask us anything and we’ll dig deeper into gardening together.
Another way to personalize the program and receive individual mentorship is to pose questions, make comments, and share ideas in the comments box below each video lesson. If you ask a question in this space, an instructor will respond quickly, and other students can too. We love this “public message board” style of discussion, because every student can learn from everyone else’s questions and ideas.
“I always thought that you had to learn gardening in-person, but I was surprised by how good the online learning is in the Online Gardening School. The amount of material is extensive and the month-to-month approach is so great. What I love most are the teaching styles of Natalie and Chloe—they give you the confidence to approach gardening without being so intimidated by it. With all my thanks, this class was worth every penny and it’s good for the world.” —Siobhan
Along with the foundational online gardening classes and monthly resources, the Online Gardening School includes a rich library of references and bonuses.
We’ve been passionate about growing food and supporting local, sustainable food systems for a long time…and we never get tired of studying these subjects and expanding our understanding. While we’re committed to offering practical, accessible instruction on the nitty-gritty of growing a garden, there’s also so much more to explore. Plus, there are lots of amazing resources out there that we just love, and think you might too. That’s where the bonus materials for the Online Gardening School come in.
Deepen your relationship with your garden ecosystem with our bonus organic online gardening courses.
When you enroll in the Online Gardening School, you’ll get instant access to a library of bonus materials where we share original and guest lessons on subjects that go way beyond the basics. These include:
- Crop Rotation
- Compost
- Companion Planting & Intercropping
- Succession Planting
- Gardening With the Moon
- Season Extension
- Container Gardening
- Yoga for Gardeners
- Seed Saving
- And more!
The Online Gardening School Appendix: Resources, Charts, and Garden Lists
Who doesn’t love a great chart? A lot of practical gardening information is best organized and shared via charts and lists that you can print for easy reference. These are resources we use ourselves and we’ve made them available to you! In the Online Gardening School Appendix, you’ll find:
- Soil Temperature Germination Chart
- Seed Spacing Chart
- Our Favorite Vegetable Varieties for Homestead Use
- Sources for Tools and Supplies
- Our Favorite Gardening Books & Other Resources
- Small Bioregional Seed Companies
- Planting Dates for Your Bioregion
These resources can be viewed on your phone, tablet, or computer, or downloaded and printed. Some are original (like our favorite veggie varieties and books), and some come from our mentors and allies.
Shape your learning journey to suit your life; our Online Gardening Classes are self-paced and easy to follow.
We hope you feel excited, not overwhelmed, by all of this material! You’ll have plenty of time to look it over, digest it, and apply it as your gardening journey unfolds. You have access to the course for life, so you can take your time browsing the material and revisiting it for years to come.
We encourage newbies to start small, with just a handful of veggies and the foundational videos. After that, these online gardening classes will continue to feed you and your garden for years after your first killer tomato. In fact, there’s a lot of material in the Online Gardening School that is appropriate for folks that have many, many years of experience.
In these times of uncertainty, doing peaceful, productive work with the living world is truly a potent medicine. When this work also increases you and your community’s food security, it’s revolutionary.
“Each day, my peace of mind is directly correlated with the time I spend in my garden.” – Natalie Bogwalker
100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
If you aren’t fully satisfied, we’ll give you a full refund for up to 2 weeks after you’re granted access to the class.
Go At Your Own Pace
With the Online Gardening School, you can move at your own pace, taking advantage of any available time you’ve got to work in the garden. This flexibility means you can tailor your learning experience to your unique lifestyle and schedule.
Lifetime Access
When you sign up for the Online Gardening School, you get lifetime access to all course materials. This means you’ll be able to revisit lessons over and over, year after year. Also, as we add new content to the program, it will be yours, free of charge.
Begin your gardening journey with seasoned mentors.
Your organic gardening guides bring enthusiasm and decades of experience to the table. Their own paths have been deeply influenced by their time in the garden — nurturing small seeds, excitedly watching them germinate, celebrating their strong green growth, marveling at the flowers and pollinators, and graciously harvesting delicious fruits and roots to prepare with love in the kitchen and share with friends, family, and neighbors. Chloe and Natalie have both shaped their lives around growing food and celebrating the rhythms of the seasons through gardening, farming, raising animals, and practicing permaculture.
Natalie started her first garden in the backyard of a rental house in college.
She had begrudgingly helped her mother in the garden as a child, but at 19, when she began to understand the cultural and political importance of food autonomy, that’s when she really dove in. Once she took the plunge herself, with all of her early-adulthood political passion and intensity, she fell deeply in love with the process. Natalie found that gardening gave her a sense of peace, gave her body the physical challenges that it needed, and gave her mind a healthy outlet for analysis and improvement. She changed her studies to ecological agriculture and graduated from The Evergreen State College with a degree in the subject. She taught her first gardening class over 20 years ago at a free school in Olympia, Washington. Since then, Natalie has dedicated her life to learning, sharing, teaching, and organizing the teaching of earthskills, including organic gardening, permaculture, natural building, and carpentry. Natalie currently directs Wild Abundance, a school she founded in 2008 that teaches skills for self-sufficiency.
Chloe wanted to be a farmer since she was a wee child in the suburbs of Northern California.
She didn’t grow up with any kind of garden at home, but two of her best friends lived more rurally and their families raised vegetables, flowers and fruits, milked goats, made cheese, and rode horses. Needless to say, Chloe spent as much time with them as possible. From the age of about 7, when Chloe took a stance against the cruelty of factory farms and became a vegetarian, activism has been a part of her passion for food and the earth. Throughout her life, she’s explored and engaged the intersections of food, environment, social justice, and community. She has long yearned to understand how and why we humans have gotten into such a dysfunctional relationship with the sources of our sustenance, and how we can shift that. In order to explore these powerful questions she’s pursued formal and informal education, including: a degree in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems from the University of California, Santa Cruz; work with direct-trade models and collaborative projects with farmer cooperatives; traveling and volunteering on farms all over the world; working on commercial farms; and lots of experimentation. From 2013-2022 she co-managed a 23 acre homestead with her then-partner. She and Natalie are currently putting the finishing touches on a holistic gardening book through Storey Publishing.
The bounty of the Earth is waiting for YOU!
Frequently Asked Questions about the Online Gardening School
No, you will be totally fine! We give a lot of information so that gardeners of all skill levels can benefit from the program, but it’s designed to be accessible to beginners. Just make sure to start with the foundational videos and focus on a few vegetables at first (not all of them!).
Yes! We think this online gardening course can actually be better at getting you ready to garden on your own than working alongside an expert gardener. Many of our students have shared that their gardening success grew dramatically after they joined the Online Gardening School. We’ve found that you learn more by taking charge than by helping or apprenticing. Using this course to start your own garden, you will be in charge — but you’ll have our teachings and guidance at your fingertips. We think this is the best way to learn gardening: having a mentor, but being in charge of the garden yourself!
Yes, there will be something here for you, too. The Online Gardening School is pretty darn robust! In fact, we have a dear friend who is a large-scale commercial organic farmer and she took notes as she audited some of the videos (for her own growing practices, not just for providing feedback)! You may learn new things about vegetables you’ve already been growing, or get inspired to try growing some that you haven’t yet. With so many bonuses and in-depth foundational classes, you’ll surely find material, perspectives, and techniques that will add to your growing body of knowledge. Plus, if you sign up and decide it’s not useful, you can get a full refund during the first two weeks.
You can start the program as soon as you enroll, or at any time. If you enroll in the winter, you will be able to complete many of the foundational classes before spring, which will give you a leg up on the growing season!
Yes! This class is appropriate whether you garden on an apartment patio, tend a plot in a community garden, or have access to a backyard.
You will learn to grow the following and more! Don’t feel any obligation to grow all of these, but the information will be there if you want it.
- Arugula
- Basil
- Beans
- Beets and chard
- Blueberries
- Bramble Berries (Raspberries, Blackberries, etc.)
- Brassicas: Kale, Cabbage, Collards, and Broccoli
- Carrots
- Cilantro
- Corn
- Cucumbers
- Daikon and radishes
- Dill
- Garlic
- Lettuce
- Okra
- Onions
- Parsnips
- Peas
- Peppers and Chilis
- Potatoes
- Spinach
- Sweet potatoes
- Strawberries
- Tomatoes
- Turnips and Rutabagas
- Winter squash and pumpkins
- Zucchini
You will learn how to grow food in a way that’s cooperative with the living world. You’ll learn how to grow specific vegetables, fruits, and herbs. You might just become crazy about gardening and start giving vegetables away to your neighbors!
The foundational and bonus lessons will provide you with an accessible and useful education in the ecology of growing and producing food. This means you won’t just memorize the steps as we teach them, you’ll learn how to explore the living world of the garden and develop a dynamic, engaged relationship with it. The monthly videos and step-by-step guides to growing vegetables will help you build confidence in cultivating food and working with the rhythms of the seasons. Finally, our hope is that you’ll also grow a sense of connection and camaraderie with the Online Gardening School community through the online Q&A sessions and group conversations in the comment boxes.
At this time, partial scholarships are available to anyone who feels they need one, just click here. In addition, we give out limited numbers of three kinds of full scholarships: one based on financial need; one for folks who plan to use this knowledge to benefit a larger community or organization (especially underserved communities); and one is a racial equity scholarship for African American and Native American students. The scholarship application can be found here (live during enrollment periods only).
Instructors
Chloe Lieberman
Dallas Conyers
Anna Littman
Lewis Blake
Pricing for the Online Gardening School
One time payment: $787.00
Payment plan: $131.17 each month for 6 months
The following is included in registration: unlimited lifetime access to a well-organized and comprehensive library of video lessons, open invitations to all live Q&A sessions, one-on-one instructor support through the online classroom, live online orientation call with your cohort of students.