Local gardener offers services

A trained master gardener is prepared to work for anyone who needs a hand in doing what she loves — making things bloom into beauty.

Gayle Swagerty has just started Coulee Gardens and Design, a new business through which she offers to help her clients do everything from weeding that flower bed they just couldn’t get to, to designing a landscape for a new home.

Swagerty, a master gardener certified through Washington State University’s extension program, also holds an associate of arts degree in tree fruits from Wenatchee Valley College.

She grew up in an apple orchard and raised kids on a farm, Swagerty says, so she knows all about, and believes in having, fresh fruits and vegetables. She and her partner in life, Frank Ward, have been nursing a community garden near the Coulee Dam Credit Union for years.

“It just became a part of me,” she says of her chosen vocation.

So Swagerty is making a business of pruning and cleaning up gardens and flower beds where ever she’s needed. She’s not looking for lawn mowing work, which she says is covered by other local businesses.

“To me, it’s a niche,” she says of her target market of people who need help getting things back to beauty or creating it afresh.

And importantly, she notes, “I try to work within people’s budgets.”