Hello, my name is April, and I’m a plant and gardening addict. I have had an interest in gardening off and on since 2005 when the boyfriend and I moved into our first apartment, but the full-blown addict phase didn’t hit until 2016, seven years after moving into our first house. In February 2017, I took it to a new level by investing in a cheap 6×8 greenhouse, and that’s when I started this website.

We moved to our second home in July 2019, and I am currently working to transform it into the vision I have conjured in my mind, despite the many challenges I have faced along the way. 

In 2021, I took a detour and worked toward making gardening a side business, launching my Etsy store to sell a few plants and seeds purchased at wholesale. Life had other plans, and in 2024, I decided to stop approaching things from a business point-of-view. Being just one person, it was a struggle to grow and make my plants thrive in addition to the extra work involved with counting seeds, maintaining an informative storefront, packaging and shipping orders, and doing the customer service side of things. I cut back and grew a lot less in the summer of 2024, and in August of that year, I decided to convert ‘The Southern Gardener’ back to a journal to document my hobby. My Etsy store remains open for the few hobby things here and there that I have the time to post and sell.

Hopefully you will find something useful in this blog as I work my way through the challenges of gardening here in the deep south. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!