Today we’d like to introduce you to Gary Pilarchik.
Gary, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My path to becoming a garden social media influencer really started when I was in 2nd grade. My grandfather would come over every spring and plant a garden for us. I started helping him and from those experiences with my grandfather, teaching me the miracle of planting a garden and growing food, my passion for gardening began. A garden wants give back; all we have to do is help it along.
I spent my career as a clinical mental health therapist and worked nearly 15 years at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a community mental health therapist, in the city of Baltimore. During my time there, I got back int0 gardening and started a YouTube channel, around 2011, that now has about 800.000 subscribers. I also have 110,000 followers on Instagram. My mission is to teach people how to grow food and enjoy the mental health benefits found in creating their own living edible landscape, their gardens.
When Covid arrived, I retired from my career as a clinical mental health therapist and became a full-time garden content creator. I focused on my goals and I now have over 2,000 garden videos. As my channel grew, I built a website for selling seed and garden products, found garden affiliates to sell products I valued, and primarily focused on building and maintaining my YouTube Channel: The Rusted Garden.
Content creation is about a passion. Following that passion, that was ignited by my grandfather teaching me how to grow food and tend a garden, I now create garden content as my career. This career has allowed me the freedom to teach people how to grow food in my community and also help people with mental health and quality of life. I volunteer and am on the board of the Community Ecology Institute which focus on connecting the people and their community with nature. Its mission is aligned with mine and I can help teach the community how to grow food and enjoy the benefits of being with nature in the garden.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Becoming a social media influencer is all about having the passion for the content you create. There is no quick way to make a living as influencer without creating content you enjoy, love, and want to share with a purpose. My purpose is to teach and help.
It is not smooth or bumpy road, but more of meandering road that takes a long time to get to your destination or goal. If you goal is lots of money, it will be disappointing. If your goal is to make content you feel passionate about, you will get to the point of making additional income and even making a career out of it.
I started around 2012 and didn’t start making content full time until 2021. I recall my earned income on my channel being a couple of dollars a month. As you build you brand it is possible to make thousands of dollars a month but it needs to be sustained with new content. That is why your brand has to be attached to your passion.
One of the biggest struggles for garden content is fall and winter. When gardens end, video views and interest decrease, and revenue follows. As in influencer, you have to create a yearlong plan not only for content creation but supplemental income. As you get more subscribers and your influence pool grows, you get more opportunities. This takes time, and realistically years to build.
The other truly biggest struggle is that YouTube or your social media platform can change the rules, better known as the search algorithm for content. This can impact you positively and negatively. It is important to diversify your revenue streams but again it takes time to get to a point where you can do this. I build my brand while working full time and when my reach grew to over half of a million, I was able to step into content creation as my full-time career.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
The garden is a blank landscape nature provides. Gardeners sculpt the earth to create gardens that become living sculptures that change throughout the seasons. Every garden is different and created by earth artists. Growing food is often the goal, but how it is done and how the garden look is up to the gardener.
I am most known for creating edible landscapes on my property, that I show as teaching content. People come to my channel to learn and find support building and tending their gardens. My videos are created to get viewers the information they need without overcomplicating it. My tone is positive and it encourages people to look at successes and not failures as the latter is part of gardening. I also point out the mental health benefits of gardening.
For me I am proud of the content and how well it is received. I am also know for answering 95% of all comments left on my channel. This interaction with viewers is quite rewarding when hearing people talk about how they became a more successful gardener, how the garden has helped them with depression or anxiety, and how they have been following for a decade and now help others in their gardens. I also enjoy meeting gardeners from around the world as gardening has no boundaries. Independent of religion, region, language, philosophy, or perspective, world gardeners have one general question… why isn’t my vegetable plant growing well and how do I fix it.
What makes you happy?
I think I would just say teaching people how to grow food, tend their garden, and find a better quality of life while in their gardens.
Pricing:
- Watch my video for free on YouTube
- Join my Perk Memberships for $3.99 a month. You can find the link on my YouTube Channel The Rusted Garden.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.therustedgarden.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therustedgarden/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRustedGardenHomestead
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@THERUSTEDGARDEN
