Thats a tough one. When my children were younger I chose plan B. I now am the owner of a very strong business with more than enough income that I can take winter "off". But right now, in the beginning of spring I am working 12 hour day, 7 days a week. Here's a few thoughts I have coming from that perspective: -there is the possibility of finding a lower paying job, closer to home which would give you time to grow your business. -Last year, Matt Nathanson, singer, spoke at our high school's graduation. He gave some of the best life advice I have ever heard. EVERY DAY I think of his advice "get comfortable being uncomfortable". To be successful you have to push the envelope all the time. I linked his speech below...well worth a watch. -if you decide to do Plan B- the key to being successful is keeping all expenses very low. Don't run out and buy trucks, rent an office or any of that off the bat; I have seen sooo many landscape companies come and go because of that. On the other hand, its important to spend money on product that you know you can sell. Planters, shrubs, trees and the bigger the better because there is more money in it. -I don't use CAD anymore. It was an expense I couldn't justify considering that hand drawn is usually just as good. Actually better if you are designing perennial gardens. I also don't advertise, its never been a necessary expense. I treat my customers well enough that they are excited to share my name. -My initial business plan was not only to provide flexible employment for myself so I could prioritize my family, but to provide flexible employment to other moms. Right now I have a mom working for me who can only work random hours, but if she can get herself to and from our job site, why would I tell her she has to work the same hours as everyone else? Its important to be outside the box and creative about making a business work. I have a local friend who is in virtually the same business, and for him, his crew needs to be ready to go at 7am until 4pm everyday. If they are late he is furious. I personally don't understand that. I am very flexible and my crew always appreciates that and respects me. -I don't think about my business in a competitive way. "All boats rise" is my motto. Meaning that the more good landscaping there is out there, the more people want their landscaping to look that good and the more business there is for everyone. Very very few home owners get competitive bids on work. This year I had one, yes one, competitive bid situation. Ironically my price came in at HALF what the other landscaper bid. I think that tells you a lot about how pricing works in this business. -For a while, I was very successful providing "elite" services. I was considered the landscaper that all the wives in the richer part of town wanted to have do their gardens. It didn't matter that my prices were higher than other garden designers, actually it helped. I say for a while, because that effect has diminished in this recession. But it is an interesting thing to consider. Think Martha Stewart doing your gardens... -I don't think a website is necessary but an internet presence is important so customers can google you. Websites can get really really expensive especially if you are working all the time to stay on top of the search engines. I use Facebook as my website. It comes up if people search my name and you have a built in audience. Last year I got two jobs, one the biggest job we had all summer, off of Facebook. Post some pretty pictures of your work a couple of times a week and you reach however many friends you can find on there. A website just sits there but FB is interactive. I LOVE my job but I especially love the business part of it. I love to challenge the way people think about running a business and proving them wrong in their traditional thinking. I think liking the business part of it is important; its not just planting flowers. Okay, I know that was just a random bunch of thoughts, but i hope it helps. Good luck and i think you should be comfortable being uncomfortable and choose plan B. Here is a link that might be useful: Matt nathanson, hes on FB too.

You're welcome for the help. :) You're starting on a fun adventure, if you can just not lose faith. Try to look at the "non-successes" as just that, and not failures. Look at them as learning experiences and just keep going, trying again, not giving up. If you start small and don't count your chickens before they hatch (as tempting as that may be...), it'll be LOADS easier to do that. I'd try starting a few cuttings of everything you have, even if you don't have any rooting hormone, soilless mix or a greenhouse, and use it as a learning experience. Rooting things is really easier than one may think. All you really need is a cutting with atleast two nodes (one below the soil level for roots to sprout from and one above for leaves), some type of light soil/media to stick it in and water. Once rooted, it'll need more sun and some food of course, but just to get them rooted you don't need much. Things like rooting hormone, a heated greenhouse, bottom heat, extra-light soilless media to start them in (like peat, vermiculite or perlite), etc., do help speed things up a good bit and increase the percentage of cuttings that actually root (some people get as much as 95% or better using all the above), but you can start some things without all that. You just have to be more patient since it takes longer, and also be okay with maybe having only half of the cuttings actually root. Some plants are harder to root than others, so some you won't get any to root while others you may get 80% rooted. But if you have more time than money, that might be what you have to do to get started. If you don't have a greenhouse, set up a makeshift coldframe on the ground up against your house so you can start now (or as soon as it gets warmer than twenty degrees ~ BRRRRRR!) ~ something as simple as some stakes in the ground to hold some clear plastic up off the cuttings a bit would work (clear or "opaque" builder's or painter's plastic from Home Depot ~ just be sure to check it often for brittleness and replace it once it starts getting that way or it'll fall apart and you'll have thousands of little pieces all over your yard). You'd be getting ambient heat from the ground and your house. Just keep an eye on the temps inside it so you don't cook them (it can get over 100 degrees in there quicker than you think). Once sprouted, you could even put your seedlings in there. If it's hard for you to bend over that far, maybe you could put some old boards across some cinder blocks to raise them a bit. In your zone, it'd probably still stay warm enough inside without having to run a heater. Just remember that the taller it is, the cooler it will be since the heat from the ground and the house will have to heat a larger area. "I also do have cranberry hibiscus that produce seed, are easy to grow, and are edible. Another good choice maybe. I really like the pepper plant idea too, but do they have a long life span?" Hibiscus are always popular, so I'd say yes, they'd be good. Pretty and/or edible is usually always good. Peppers are tender perennials (will live as long as they aren't subjected to a killing freeze). Most people grow them as annuals in the veggie garden, letting them die when frost hits, but some ornamental peppers are kept in pots for years like houseplants. "Please tell me more about being a seed starter? Would I basically sell seedlings?" If you want to. It's up to you. You can sell them as three inch tall plants in 2" pots or six-packs, or you could grow them to fully mature plants. It all just depends on how long you want to keep them. I'd start out selling as soon as I had plants that I could honestly and sincerely say, "I'd pay two bucks for that." Or whatever price you plan to put on it. Be critical. Go check out what the competition's selling and make sure yours look as good or better (preferably better) for the price. For the cuttings, I'd atleast grow them until they have rooted well enough to have put on a lot of new foliage. I wouldn't ever try to sell a cutting that doesn't have but a few new leaves ~ that's too soon to be relatively sure it won't die soon after transplant. Your buyers are only buying from you because either they don't know how to propagate the plant themselves or, most likely, they don't want to have to baby the plants themselves. They want to be able to take it home, plop it into the ground or a pot outside and have it grow. So make sure yours are big enough to handle that. The ones that don't sell, I'd pot up in larger pots as they grow and put a higher price on them. At the end of this year, you'll likely have a few plants like that. That'd be nice since you can offer a wider selection to your customers. Over time you'll find out what plants sell better in larger sizes, and can plan accordingly for the next year ~ start them earlier to have them that size at the beginning of the year. Start collecting larger pots now so you'll be ready for that. You can ask at nurseries (keep in mind some, like WalMart, have to give them back to the grower, or atleast hold on to them until they can be counted/verified by the grower), landscapers and landscaped places like golf courses. Maybe even your local freecycle. Ask gardening clubs, too. To avoid bringing home pests and diseases, keep the pots separate from your growing area and dunk them in some clorox water before you use them (I use a big trashcan and put the entire stack of pots in it, letting them sit and soak for a while to make sure the clorox gets in between each pot). Other things you can collect now are any type of irrigation supplies. Hoses, hoses, hoses. Sprinklers are good as well. It's nice to have those professional misting/watering systems, but if you don't have the money, a regular yard sprinkler set up on a couple of cinder blocks set in the middle of your grow area will do the job okay for now. If you notice the plants getting beat up too much or getting funguses, you may have to resort to hand watering, but even that's not too bad ~ I use the time to plan out what I'll do the next day. Hit construction sites and ask them for any castoff lumber to build propagation beds with. Nail them into bottomless "boxes" on the ground (like raised beds), fill with compost and/or potting soil, and stick some cuttings in those for rooting (once rooted, just transplant them out into bigger pots) ~ in winter, just put some stakes at the corners or pipe hoops across them, cover with plastic, and keep going. If you get lucky and find lots of lumber and some old windows, you can even get fancy and build some cold frames like this one, or use plastic or plastic corrugated roofing sheets to make them like this one, or these. Start collecting mother plants as well ~ any plant you find easy to propagate. Build a nice flowerbed and fill it with plants to grow to take cuttings from later ~ two of each in case you lose one. If you start from cuttings now, you'll have a nice cutting source in a few years. If you can't put them in the ground, keep them in pots ~ plastic food grade barrels cut in half and holes drilled in the bottom work well, last forever and are cheap ($10 or $15 apiece ~ keep watching the classifieds in your local paper, and Craigslist). Like I keep saying, just start small and be patient. Don't give up, and five years down the road you may be sitting in your backyard looking at half a dozen propagation beds, a dozen cold frames, a couple thousand pots lined up in rows and a little greenhouse ~ all filled with growing plants. Nice thought, isn't it? :)

Yours would not be a business that would need a plan, a corporation, etc. Start with the first items--buy; sell, fix up and learn to sell on Ebay. The key is--are you good at spotting a value that you can fix up and resell at a profit? A friend of mine took me to the Rose Bowl swap meet. He walked through a bunch of places and found several tole trays. He knew which were valuable; how to clean them and resold them at a profit. He wasn't trying to deal in lots of different items. He didn't have fancy business cards or a plan--he just knew his own niche. DH knows waterford and spotted a large dirty set of an old waterford pattern juice glasses; we got it. Make a fortune on it? I don't know. People who make lots of money on the trash to treasures & sell on Ebay are writing books about it; selling tapes on how to do it and doing seminars. That way they have no inventory; and they may not know a great deal more than you do. Good luck, get started.

Lot of discussions on starting a landscape-related business on the Professional Gardening forum. You can review previous discussions or post your request there for specific input. This forum tends to focus more on homeowners asking design-specific questions. Or just general landscape help.