Karel Edgar flourishes in landscaping business, part-time work for state conservation department

It's a busy time of year for area native Karel Edgar as she heads into the spring and summer months at the helm of her landscaping business, Ready to Grow.

"Spring is the time when it picks up a lot," she says.

Edgar gained an early appreciation for the outdoors from her grandparents.

"I've always been an outdoor person," she says. "My grandparents used to take us to the Current River when I was a kid. They had a cabin down there, so we spent all our summers down in the Current River. My grandpa'd take me fishing and my grandmother, she taught me about gardening."

She now lives in her grandparents' home on a 2-acre lot in Cape Girardeau, where she grew up gardening alongside her grandma.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com Butterfly weed

"When they moved in there in the early '50s, they put in huge gardens; my grandmother had probably a half-acre garden," she says. "... My grandmother taught me and my sister how to garden as I was growing up."

With that experience and a long history working for the Missouri Department of Conservation and at Trail of Tears State Park, Edgar decided to incorporate her knowledge of plants and the outdoors to create Ready to Grow in 2012.

"I'd been kind of dabbling with [landscaping] back and forth for a long time, especially since my son was born; he's 11 now," she says. "... I had a hard time finding a job that I could get my schedule to work around him so I'd still be able to see him. So it just kind of happened that I came up with the idea [for Ready to Grow], and I kind of went with it."

The business started small, but she says it has grown consistently without any real promotion.

"I started out with a little booth at the farmers market, and we did little garden beds, like portable garden beds for people that live in apartments," Edgar says.

She sold the planters, herbs and small items and promoted the landscaping aspect of the business.

"So that got the word out a little bit," she says.

She decided to continue her studies at Southeast Missouri State University and started taking horticulture classes to brush up on her skills and knowledge.

"Because I'd always had the biology side of everything, and I took plant taxonomy and botany, and it's a little bit different than planting ornamental," she says.

Through her business, Edgar offers anything from planting a tray of flowers to redesigning an entire landscape. She also offers seasonal maintenance and consultations.

By line / Cutline:Karel Edgar, owner of Ready to Grow, plants pansies in a client's flower bed.Laura Simon

Edgar, who will turn 40 in July, has been working at Trail of Tears since she was 19. She began her tenure with AmeriCorps, a program based out of Southeast. She then performed environmental education at the park for two years to earn money for schooling.

"I also worked there as a seasonal naturalist for a couple of years," she says.

She continues to work in part-time roles with the Missouri Department of Conservation and with Trail of Tears.

During the wintertime, Edgar works at Trail of Tears, performing tasks like removing exotic species of plants, trail construction and maintenance and prescribed burns, where certain parts of forest are burned to control the brush level.

She says there is a plan for every burn, which always has a big crew to make sure it's safely executed.

Karel Edgar, owner of Ready to Grow, plants pansies in a client's flower bed.Laura Simon

"It's very dependent on weather and there's very certain parameters that we have to meet to be able to go out and actually set one of these burns," Edgar says. "The area can vary from 5 acres up to 1,000 acres sometimes, so there's a lot of people there involved in that."

She says the controlled burns are just that -- controlled. The flames are typically low level and special precautions are taken so the fire on the designated area doesn't spread.

"It's not like fighting wildfire, but it's still really interesting," she says. "Usually the purpose is different for each burn unit, but usually it has to do with restoring an area to what it once was before human intervention."

Another purpose of the burns is to rid the landscape of invasive plants not native to Southeast Missouri.

The main invasive plants seen in Missouri are autumn olive, an invasive shrub that was introduced in the 1950s, and bush honeysuckle.

Karel Edgar, owner of Ready to Grow, plants phlox in a client's flower bed.Laura Simon

Locally, Edgar says native plants are a growing trend in landscaping.

"Yeah, there's a big interest in it now, especially with the attention that's being given to pollinators and bees and monarch butterflies," she says.

She says monarch butterflies rely primarily on milkweed plants as their food source and to rear caterpillars.

"They won't lay eggs on any other plant, so if you want monarch butterflies, it helps a lot to plant milkweed species," she says. "... I try to push as many native plants as possible, especially for pollinators."

Edgar says she tries to be as organic as possible, avoiding chemicals that could avoid bees or other pollinators.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com Karel Edgar, owner of Ready to Grow

"The closer you can get to Southeast Missouri-sourced plants, the better it is for the pollinators," she says. "... If you can plant a few things here and there that will help them out, it beautifies your garden and helps the pollinators ... and the birds, too."

In the past five years, Edgar says her business has grown more than she expected, and she hopes to see that growth continue.

"The growing process has been interesting for me because I've never run a business by myself before, but I love it because it gives me flexibility," she says. "... I'm going to stick with this as long as I can and learn to grow with it as it grows."

And when it comes to partnering with local businesses, Edgar says she likes to focus her business on small businesses and woman-owned businesses.

"I work with a lot of women," she says. "We kind of hold each other up."

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com Karel Edgar, owner of Ready to Grow