Terms of Service

Effective date: October 28, 2026.

Provider: Coachella Gardening LLC, a California limited liability company (Secretary of State file no. B20260458618), doing business as Coachella Gardening ("we", "us", "the Consultant"). Sessions, workshops and planting jobs are performed personally by its sole member and manager, Karen A. Gilbert. Mailing address: 78680 Highway 111 #1050, La Quinta, CA 92253-2048. Email: [email protected]. Phone: (909) 375-4825. Website: https://coachellagardening.com (the "Site").

Agreement to these Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the Site and every service we offer through it. By booking a Quick Consult, sending a service or workshop request, paying an invoice, submitting an intake form, subscribing to the newsletter, or otherwise using the Site, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site or book a service. The version of these Terms in effect when you book or pay governs that engagement.

What we do

Coachella Gardening is an independent garden and landscape design consulting practice serving the low-desert Coachella Valley (Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Bermuda Dunes, La Quinta, Indio and Coachella). We sell three things:

• Advice and written garden plans: video consults, onsite walk-throughs and written garden layout designs.
• Workshops: one-hour, hands-on group sessions arranged with a host for a group of a stated size.
• Small planting jobs: a plants-only follow-on to a consult or workshop, limited to jobs under one thousand dollars in total including the plants we supply, under California's minor-work exemption (see "Small planting jobs" below).

We do not perform construction, irrigation installation or any other work that requires a contractor's license, and we receive no referral fees or vendor commissions.

Our services and how they are booked

Quick Consult (video call)

A Quick Consult is a short video call, offered in two lengths, booked and paid on the Site at the price shown on the Quick Consult page. You pick a time from our real availability, and the slot is held for you for 20 minutes while you pay. Your booking is confirmed only when PayPal has captured your payment; an authorization or pending payment does not reserve the session. The booking calendar shows only the times we can offer, including any minimum notice. The call takes place on Zoom; the joining link is in your confirmation email. Calls are not recorded. Before the call you may send us your questions and photos through the intake link in that email. A Quick Consult is advice only; no written deliverable is included unless we say otherwise.

Garden Layout Design and Seasonal Plant Turn Over (requested services)

These services are not bought on the Site. You send a request from the service page; we reply within one business day to agree a date, and we then send a PayPal invoice for the price published on that page. Your date is confirmed when the invoice is paid. Until then it is a tentative hold that we may release.

• Garden Layout Design, virtual tier: a 30-minute video walk-through with suggestions. No written layout is included.
• Garden Layout Design, onsite tier: an onsite walk-through and intake conversation, a written garden layout design covering a garden area of about 500 square feet, and a Desert Gardening Calendar. The finished design is emailed to you 5 to 10 business days after the visit. Larger areas are considered on request and may be priced differently; we will tell you before invoicing. One round of minor revisions (clarifications and small plant swaps) requested within 14 days of delivery is included; a redesign or a new area is a new engagement.
• Seasonal Plant Turn Over: a one-hour onsite walk-through covering plant needs, watering, pests and maintenance, and a list of plants suited to your established garden for the coming season.

Onsite services are offered only within our service area (the nine cities named above). Virtual consults are open to anyone.

Workshops

Workshops are one-hour, hands-on group sessions held at a location you arrange (your home, a community room or another venue you have the right to use). They are priced per person, with a minimum and maximum group size shown on each workshop page. You, as the host, send a request with your head count and preferred dates; we reply within one business day, agree the details, and send one PayPal invoice to you for the full group at the published per-person price. The workshop date is confirmed when the invoice is paid. The invoice amount is based on the head count you confirm. Because plants and materials are bought for that count, the invoice is not reduced if fewer people attend; extra attendees, up to the maximum group size, are invoiced afterwards at the per-person price.

We bring the plants, seeds, soil and materials for each participant to take home. Participants handle soil, plants, water and light hand tools; anyone with a plant or soil allergy, or who is pregnant or immune-compromised, should wear gloves and take the precautions their doctor advises. Participants under 18 are welcome when a parent or guardian is present, and the host is responsible for them. The host is responsible for the venue, including a suitable workspace, water access, shade or indoor space in hot weather, and permission to hold the workshop there.

Workshop plants and seeds are living materials. We do not guarantee that they will thrive after they leave the workshop. Our seed and plant choices are selected for the low desert and the season; container sizes vary with the arrangement. Any beverage we serve at a workshop is non-alcoholic. A host who chooses to offer alcohol to their own guests does so on their own responsibility, as the host of a private gathering, and not as part of our service.

Prices and changes

Prices are shown on the Site in US dollars. We may enable, disable or change the price of any service at any time. A price change does not affect a booking already confirmed or an invoice already issued. If a Quick Consult's price changes between the moment you load the page and the moment you pay, the Site stops the checkout and asks you to confirm the new price; you are never charged a price you did not see.

Payment

All payment is processed by PayPal: guest checkout for the Quick Consult, and PayPal invoices for everything else. You do not need a PayPal account. We never see or store your card number. Your receipt comes from PayPal; our confirmation email comes from us.

Sales tax. Our consulting and workshop fees are services. Plants we supply in a small planting job are a retail sale; sales tax is added to the plant portion of the invoice at the rate for your address.

If something goes wrong with a Quick Consult payment. If your payment is captured but the time slot is no longer available by the time we confirm it, we refund the payment in full automatically and tell you by email. If PayPal reports a problem we cannot resolve within 24 hours, we refund the payment and tell you by email. In either case you are welcome to book again.

Cancellation, rescheduling, and refunds

All sales are final. Fees are non-refundable once your booking or date is confirmed, and we do not operate a self-service refund process. This policy is shown beside the pay button, on every invoice, in your confirmation email and here.

Quick Consult: free rescheduling. You may reschedule a confirmed Quick Consult as many times as you need, at no charge, as long as you do so at least 24 hours before the session start time, using the link in your confirmation email. A reschedule request made less than 24 hours before the session, or a missed session, forfeits the fee.

Requested services and workshops. Once your invoice is paid you may move the date once at no charge with at least 72 hours' notice, and we will find a new date together within 60 days. A change inside that notice period, a second change, or a no-show at the agreed time and place, forfeits the fee.

Weather and heat. Onsite visits and outdoor workshops may be moved by either of us for extreme heat, wind, rain or an air-quality alert. A move we initiate for weather never costs you anything and never forfeits your fee.

If we cancel. If we cannot deliver a session we have confirmed, we offer you a new date or a full refund, your choice.

If a session reveals your project needs a licensed professional. If, during a consult, it becomes clear that your real need is work we cannot take on (see the scope section above), we will say so, point you to the right kind of professional, and refund the consult fee or credit it toward a future session at our discretion.

Goodwill relief. We may, at our sole discretion, offer a refund or a credit toward a future session in individual cases. This is a courtesy, not an entitlement, and does not change the policy above.

Your rights are not waived. Nothing in this section waives any statutory right you may have that cannot be waived by agreement, or your right to pursue a payment dispute with your card issuer or with PayPal. We will respond to such disputes with our own records of the booking and the service provided.

Small planting jobs (planting help)

After a consult or workshop you may ask us to set out plants for you. We offer this only as a small planting job under the minor-work exemption in California Business and Professions Code section 7048, and the following disclosure applies to every such job and to every place we mention it:

Coachella Gardening is not licensed under California's Contractors State License Law. Planting help is limited to small jobs under one thousand dollars in total, including plants, that need no permit.

• What it covers. Setting plants, seedlings and container arrangements into existing beds or pots, with soil amendment and mulch, using plants we supply at a stated price. Nothing else: no irrigation work, no hardscape, no earthwork, no electrical, no structures, no chemical application, no tree work.
• The cap. The total of labor, plants, materials and every other item on the job is less than one thousand dollars. We will not split a larger job into pieces, treat it as part of a larger project, or take on part of a job that is over the cap. A job that would exceed the cap is referred to a licensed contractor, and we step away from it.
• How it is agreed. Before any work we send a written job summary listing the plants, the labor and the total. The plants, materials and sales tax are invoiced and paid in advance (that is when we buy them for you, and the work date is confirmed when that invoice is paid); the labor is invoiced on completion of the work and is due on receipt. The work is done personally by Karen A. Gilbert, the LLC's sole member, without helpers.
• Plants. We choose healthy plants suited to the low desert and your site, but plants are living things and their survival depends on watering, weather and care after we leave. We give you care instructions; we do not guarantee survival or establishment and do not replace plants that fail.
• Access and site conditions. You confirm that you own the property or have the owner's permission, that you will tell us about buried irrigation lines, utilities and anything else we should avoid, and that pets will be secured. We are not responsible for damage to unmarked lines or objects we were not told about.

Onsite visits and access

For an onsite service or an in-home workshop, you agree that an adult with authority over the property will be present, that you have arranged access (gates, codes, HOA guest procedures), and that pets will be secured. We walk, look, photograph with your permission, and handle plants and soil; we do not climb, operate your equipment, move heavy objects, enter crawl spaces or roofs, or disturb utilities. If a site is unsafe to work in, we may stop the visit and reschedule it under the cancellation section above.

Intake materials and your content

To deliver a service we ask you for information about your garden: your address, photographs, what you are growing, your goals and your questions. By sending these you grant us a limited license to use them to perform the service you booked and to prepare your deliverable, and you confirm that you have the right to share them and that they are accurate. Handling and retention are described in our Privacy Policy. We may keep anonymized horticultural observations (what grows where, what failed and why) as part of our general knowledge; those never identify you or your property.

Deliverables and intellectual property

A written deliverable (a garden layout design, a plant list, a calendar) is delivered as a PDF through a private link emailed to you; the link works for 12 months after your session, and we delete the file 24 months after your session, so please save your own copy. Every deliverable carries our advisory disclaimer and states its assumptions.

Deliverables are licensed to you for your own use on the property they were prepared for. You may share them with the contractors and professionals you hire for that property. We retain ownership of our templates, methods, checklists, plant database, written content, photography and the Site itself. Site content may not be copied, scraped or republished except as allowed by law or with our written permission.

Testimonials, photographs and case studies

We never publish your name, your property's images, your city combined with identifying detail, or a case study about your project without your separate written consent, recorded on a consent form. You may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us, and we remove the associated public content on our next site update. Photographs we take during a visit are for preparing your deliverable; any other use needs that same consent.

Communications

We communicate by email from coachellagardening.com addresses, and by phone or video call for sessions. We do not send marketing text messages. Transactional messages about a booking (confirmation, reschedule, intake reminder, your deliverable, a request for a review) are part of the service and are separate from the newsletter, which you choose to receive and can leave at any time. Video consults are not recorded. If we ever ask to record one, we will ask for your consent at the start of the call and you may decline.

Using the Site

You agree not to misuse the Site: no automated scraping, no attempts to bypass the booking flow or bot checks, no submissions of content you do not have the right to share, and no uploads containing malicious code. We may decline or cancel a request, booking or workshop that appears fraudulent, abusive or outside our scope, with a full refund of anything paid for a session not yet delivered.

Disclaimers and limitation of liability

Our services, deliverables and the Site are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. To the extent permitted by law we disclaim implied warranties, including merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, beyond those that cannot be disclaimed. Our total liability arising out of or relating to a service, a workshop, a planting job or the Site is limited to the amount you paid us for the engagement at issue. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special or punitive damages, including plant loss, water damage, loss of use or costs of replacement work. Nothing in these Terms limits any liability that cannot be limited under California law, such as liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud, or death or personal injury caused by our negligence. This section works together with the scope, cancellation and planting-job sections above.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless against third-party claims, and the reasonable costs of defending them, that arise from your use of a deliverable in a way inconsistent with these Terms, your failure to engage the licensed professionals your project requires, your breach of these Terms, injury to a workshop participant caused by the venue or by the host's conduct, or inaccurate information you gave us about your property, its utilities or its ownership.

Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before filing any claim, you agree to contact us and give us 30 days to try to resolve it informally. A dispute that is not resolved informally will be heard in the state courts of California. Where the law lets the parties choose, we each choose the courts located in Riverside County, California; nothing in this paragraph limits any venue right California law gives you as a consumer, including your right to bring a claim in small claims court.

General

These Terms, the Privacy Policy and your booking or invoice are the whole agreement between us for that engagement. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. You may not assign your booking to someone else without our consent; we may assign these Terms to a successor to the practice. Our failure to enforce a term is not a waiver of it. Notices to us go to the mailing address or email above; legal process may be served on our agent for service of process at the address on file with the California Secretary of State. Notices to you go to the email address you gave us.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The date at the top shows the current version, and material changes are noted on the Site. The version in effect when you book or pay governs that engagement.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Reach us through our Contact page, by email at [email protected], or by mail at 78680 Highway 111 #1050, La Quinta, CA 92253-2048.