Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Terry.
Dylan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was always into playing outside as a child growing up in Coconut Grove and developed an appreciation for the natural world. While a teenager I began to help my father plant fruit trees and start a veggie garden in our yard. From there on I was hooked and in college was able to continue to develop this new passion by helping to care for a garden on campus that had been abandoned. At the time it was still a hobby and I was focused on majoring in visual art with a focus on painting.
After graduating in 2008 the economy was in recession and I found great difficulty selling paintings and getting a job I was interested in. I eventually was able to do a short internship with Knight Foundation in which I was able to study and compile a document outlining the growing local food movement in South Florida. Soon after, while walking around Fairchild’s Edible Garden Festival I was hired on the spot to work for The Market Company to help with graphic design some and the rest of the time with a side garden project doing school gardens as a partnership with The Education Fund.
During the months working there, I realized the growing potential for a business focused on helping others grow food with edible gardens. When I brought up an idea of starting an edible garden business my parents thought it wouldn’t work, and that I should get more experience working where I was before starting my own company. Soon after, while eating lunch right outside the office at work there was an attempted robbery at the tire shop next door and the owner of the tire shop ended up shooting one of the young robbers in the chest.
After not telling my mother about it she soon found out when her friends saw me as a witness on the news. After that, my parents were supportive on me starting a company.
In the beginning of the company, I was pretty nervous about whether or not it would be a viable business idea but it soon became apparent that there was enough demand to keep us very busy throughout the main season. This was a pleasant surprise and the demand has continued throughout the years. With time I have continued to learn from trial and error to make the business work better and to improve and innovate our gardening practices as we see fit.
Has it been a smooth road?
Most of the time it has been a smooth road. It is great to make a living doing something I like to do. Most people we’ve helped have been very excited and happy with their garden.
As for struggles, most of them have been in developing the skills of running a company. I never studied business in school so most of what I know has been through trial and error, intuition and occasional advice from friends and family. A few years ago we were forced to move out of our last location due to zoning issues and find and set up our new nursery right before the main planting season. This last fall our planting was delayed for weeks right at the beginning of our busy season due to setbacks from Hurricane Irma.
Staffing with the company has been challenging at times too. The garden business is very seasonal with high demand in the coolest time of year and low demand in the warmest time of year. This makes it difficult to keep a large team working all year so generally, we have stayed small and brought on extra help in the busy season as needed. With proper organization and management, the company could be scaled to become larger but it isn’t something that I am in a rush to do.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Ready-to-Grow Gardens is a company that specializes in edible gardens. It is a multifaceted company in that we help others both by creating edible gardens through design, installation, and maintenance but also we help others to create edible gardens on their own through education and helping provide materials at our edible garden center.
Edible gardening is pretty much all we do as a company so after doing it for many years we have become very proficient at it. We can help with any aspect of edible gardens, we can do all or just a portion of an edible garden project. Every garden that we help plant is an opportunity to teach others about growing food. We encourage clients to be engaged in the process and plant with us or at least watch us plant and ask questions.
Planting with children in schools is extremely fulfilling. If children start gardening at a young age it can be a skill and interest to last a lifetime. Many children don’t like vegetables but after planting, seeing it grow and harvesting many of them will end up trying the harvested produce and love it! It is clear that more edible gardens in schools lead to children eating a more balanced diet and reduces childhood obesity and malnutrition.
With time, I’d like to further develop the educational component of the business to include more regular classes and educational videos. As a company, we can only help so many people through our physical efforts to create and maintain gardens but we feel that through education we can reach a much broader audience, including those that cannot afford our garden services.
Truthfully what we do is a high volume of small-scale projects so our greatest impact has been raising general awareness of organic local food production through the people we have helped over the last 8 years of helping with gardens. Playing a part in increasing awareness is what we are most proud of.
Much of the information about growing food online and in books are written for people living in colder climates. While most of the country plants in the spring, and harvests in the fall, in South FL it is reversed and most veggies are planted in the fall and harvested in the spring. On the other hand, in our warm rainy season, one is able to plant tropical fruits and vegetables. This difference in our climate is one of the main lessons that we teach to those that are new to gardening in our area.
Our Ready-to-Grow Garden Center is a good place for people to get materials for their garden. Though our hours aren’t regular we have a wide selection of organically grown veggie and herb plants as well as other supplies for one’s garden such as soil mix and organic fertilizers/pesticides. We are currently open every second and fourth Saturday from 2-6pm (through February), otherwise, we are open by appointment. Follow us or join our email list for updates on our hours and sales.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Over the last 8 years of working with edible gardens here, I have seen growing awareness and interest. Many people in Miami had never gardened before or seen their parents or grandparents gardening. Many people have had tropical fruit trees in their yards but that is the main extent of their edible garden experience here. Because of this, many people starting gardens here are starting from scratch.
Furthermore, as I mentioned most information out there is geared to people growing in a colder climate so many people starting out don’t understand how the seasons work here and when to plant vegetables.
With all this said, I see there being continued opportunity for the local food movement to grow and thrive. Generally, Miami has been on the right track with perhaps a majority of schools having a garden, lots of farmers markets and more and more restaurants supporting local farms and tailoring their menus to what is in season.
The main improvement I can see is to create an infrastructure that supports community gardens and fruit groves using vacant land and underutilized parks and public spaces. This will be a combination of modifying laws and zoning, developing an organization of execution and management and allocating funding.
Contact Info:
- Address:4590 SW 122nd Ave, Miami, FL, 33175
- Website: www.ready-to-grow.com
- Phone: 786-436-7703
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/readytogrowgardens/
- Facebook: facebook.com/ReadyToGrowGardensSouthFL/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ready-to-grow-gardens-miami
Gabriel Gaviria (photographyprism.com)
Getting in touch: VoyageMIA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
