Jim’s love for gardening started many years ago when he and his wife, Karene, bought their first home in West Jordan in 1986. His vegetable garden wasn’t very big, but it was large enough for the two of them. Wherever they've lived Jim has had a successful vegetable garden. After buying their final home in 1996, Jim found himself living next to a neighbor who had this thing called a square foot garden. He hadn’t heard anything about it so he continued on his merry way with a traditional row garden. After a couple of years it became (painfully) obvious that he couldn’t keep up with his neighbors garden yield. And he noticed his neighbor hardly ever spent time weeding, didn’t do any hard work, and also started planting much early than everyone else.

Jim was eventually sold on the square foot gardening system and did a 5-week internship under the direct tutelage of Mel Bartholomew-the inventor and author of the SFG system when it was headquartered in Eden, Utah in 2000. Being a staff member of the SFG Foundation for 15 years, Jim teaches classes throughout the state of Utah and has had the responsibility of training future SFG instructors at Thanksgiving Point. He’s been a guest speaker at various garden society meetings, emergency preparedness events, 3-day SFG symposiums and many other community functions.

Jim’s goal is to teach others how to successfully grow their own organic, pesticide, and chemical free vegetables at home. He’s written his first eBook on the subject of square foot gardening and hosts his own blog and Facebook page under the name of: the wealthy earth. He and his wife are the parents of 3 wonderful children. His most current project is trying to finish his second eBook on how to grow lettuce throughout the hot summer months. He has been employed in the healthcare industry for 30 years and in his free time enjoys reading, biking, and coaching football.