Today we’d like to introduce you to Tisa Watts.
Hi Tisa, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I’ve always returned to gardening, no matter what else was happening in my life — marriage, divorce, high-tech jobs, my own education, various retail jobs, depression, etc. Gardening centers me, and I know it centers others, too. When I became a landscape designer, clients asked me to teach them how to take care of their “new investment,” and I realized I loved teaching. There’s nowhere for ordinary adults to take short, hands-on classes on topics like pruning or growing vegetables or even just how to plant a tree. People want to see and practice these skills beside a knowledgeable person, and they will gladly pay for that experience. The Columbus Garden School (CGS) has been a marriage made in heaven — curious, motivated people eagerly pay us to share the joy of gardening (and crafts, construction, herbalism, animal care, etc.) with them.
My original idea was to teach a few hands-on gardening classes out of the house. We had no idea CGS would become so big. Now, we have 30-70 students per week — onsite, online, and at other venues. I don’t have a business background, and I began CGS at age 57. Years 2-3 took place in the middle of a global pandemic, and yet we’re still here! Much of our decision-making has been intuitive – looking at what life threw our way and making the best choices we could.
We offer classes no one else in Columbus offers. We offer whatever strikes our fancy (so long as I can find students and instructors). CGS can pivot on a dime. We choose what to offer even if it doesn’t make us a lot of money; for example, classes that allow us to “stay true“ (reverse quote marks) to our values of DIY, low-toxic, and fun. There may be profit in glitter, but it’s hell on the environment and on one’s karma.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We didn’t have a business model to follow when we started the Columbus Garden School. We just figured it out along the way. When we started in January 2019, our first class had maybe five or six students — and half of them were my friends! There was no prairie yet, and the demonstration garden was just fence posts stuck in the muddy ground. We advertised our classes on Facebook and in the local newspaper.
The pandemic temporarily closed our doors in March 2020, a year after we started. Before March, all of our in-person classes were filling, and many had waiting lists. Clearly, we were onto a great idea with the garden school! The pandemic forced us to seriously consider offering online classes for the first time. The silver lining was that almost everyone with a computer had to learn how to use Zoom during COVID, so the learning curve was taken care of.
We weren’t the first to take our classes online, though – we waited and watched to learn how we could do it BETTER than other people. It’s not a simple thing to ask a classroom instructor to suddenly do an online presentation. Every class generates discussions of ways we can improve. We ask students for feedback, too.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about Columbus Garden School?
We offer year-round, eco-friendly gardening, homesteading, and crafting classes, covering the spectrum from starting seeds to food preservation to making compost. (Additional topics include organic pest control, gardening for pollinators, construction workshops for women, and more.) We also have a keen interest in promoting the use of native plants in residential landscapes in central Ohio and beyond.
We teach real-life skills to people who want to grow food, raise chickens, make soup, paint a picture, or fix a toilet. Our students are beginners (in a room full of beginners) willing to learn something new from the bottom up from people who are absolutely passionate about their skill or craft. After a class at CGS, our students see the world beyond themselves differently.
We offer a unique thing at the Columbus Garden School — “one-off” classes across a spectrum of DIY topics, mostly geared for adults. I have the privilege of paying knowledgeable, passionate instructors to share their skills with others — real-life skills that might otherwise just fade away under the crush of modern life. Our students show up ready to learn something new and to have fun doing it. They are curious, thoughtful, hilarious, and kind. It’s never a bad day when I’m talking to students about their classes and their lives (and I’m an introvert!). CGS instructors and students are simply AWESOME.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Pivot, pivot, pivot! If something’s not working, figure out something else. We hadn’t given serious thought to offering online classes before COVID hit. We made a workshop out of adding a ceiling fan to the classroom to increase healthy air circulation indoors. Then, we focused on classes that got students out of the classroom and into the garden. We used another workshop to build an outdoor classroom in the garage. It was a stressful time, but the pandemic forced us to broaden our mindset about the school and the classes we offered, and we’re better because of that challenge.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.columbusgardenschool.com
- Instagram: @columbusgardenschool
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/columbusgardenschool
Image Credits
Tisa Watts
