Jacques Lyakov

Jacques Lyakov is a gardener and a popular content creator.

He has 312K subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Jacques in the Garden.’

Jacques also works at ‘Epic Gardening.’

Introduction-

Jacques Lyakov is a Bulgarian.

He studied Bachelor of Science Earth Sciences.

From 2015 to 2017, Jacques studied for a M.S. degree at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

In September 2018, he started studying for a PhD in Geology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego.

Jacques dropped out of his PhD and started working at ‘Epic Gardening.’

‘Epic Gardening’ is a gardening business and YouTube channel founded by Kevin Espiritu.

Falling in love with gardening-

Prior to 2020, Jacques had no knowledge of gardening.

But he had been curious and had a habit of reading books from cover to cover.

Jacques picked up the ‘How to Grow More Vegetables’ book authored by John Jeavons; this was the first gardening book that he ever read.

This book taught him about double digging, preparing the soil and different kinds of plants and systems, and provided him with a script to start his garden.

In 2020, the place which Jacques chose to garden was just a sea of grass with a random cactus and an empty bed.

He started filling the whole area with tomatoes and stakes and strings.

The garden worked out and this got Jacques hooked on gardening, and he started growing nonstop.

The rich flavour of tomatoes only deepened his interest in gardening; in addition to growing plants, he also built an ecosystem with bugs and bees resembling wilderness to maintain a balance.

Jacques started reading a lot of gardening books and putting them into practice.

Initially, he began using synthetic chemicals in his garden but later switched to organic.

Being frugal; meeting Kevin Espiritu & dropping out of PhD-

While studying for a PhD, Jacques started building his garden and a bigger back garden.

As he was a PhD student with not much cash, he built a custom chicken coop under $2000 by repurposing a variety of materials.

In 2020, Jacques watched the video, ‘2 Easy Methods to Revitalize OLD Potting Soil’ published by Kevin.

After watching this video, he messaged him on Instagram and gave a few recommendations on improving the soil.

Kevin read the message; at that time, Jacques was his neighbour and had a pumpkin as his profile photo; as Jacques is a French name, Kevin assumed him to be an old French man.

So, Kevin was scared to meet him, but he did it anyway.

In September 2020, Kevin moved into the Epic Homestead; he was struggling to manage his garden all by himself, so he put a call out for a garden assistant.

Jacques applied for the position and got the job.

At that time, he started losing interest in his PhD.

Jacques originally chose to do a PhD in geology for his love of outdoors, but it turned out that he was spending a lot of time in the lab, which he didn’t like.

In 2021, Kevin bought a warehouse for shipping raised garden beds and birdies beds and as he needed help, he offered Jacques a position at ‘Epic Gardening.’

Thanks to this, in June 2021, he dropped out of his PhD and started working at ‘Epic Gardening.’

Initially, Jacques started operating forklifts to drive and ship orders at ‘Epic Gardening’ and later became a creator and research lead.

Starting ‘Jacques in the Garden’-

After Jacques got backyard chickens in his garden, he started doing many gardening activities; so, he decided to document them.

Initially, he started with Instagram; initially, he called himself ‘Garden Hermit,’ later, changed his Instagram profile to ‘jacquesinthegarden.’

On 9 September 2021, Jacques started his YouTube channel, ‘Jacques in the Garden.’

And on 25 September 2021, he published his first video, ‘Jacques in the Garden | Channel Intro.’

Jacques also started his TikTok channel.

As of October 2023, he has 313K subscribers on his YouTube channel and 238K followers on Instagram.

Teaching has been his passion; while studying for PhD, he used to teach and after becoming a YouTuber, he teaches gardening to many people.

Personal life-

Jacques is in a relationship with Katrina.

His urban garden is located in San Diego, and he lives in San Diego, California, United States.

Jacques loves cooking, pizza, and DIY projects; tomato is his favourite plant.

So, how are you inspired by Jacques Lyakov’s success story?

Share with me in the comment section below.