Gardening for Late Bloomers: An Introduction

Fifteen years ago, if you had told this mild-mannered newspaper reporter that I would start playing roller derby at age 30, start a blog about it and eventually appear on ESPN, I would have laughed in your face.

Ten years ago, if you had told me that my next blog would be about gardening, I would have looked around to make sure you hadn’t mistaken me for someone else. 

Yet here I am, doing just that. So allow me to explain a few things first:

1. At this point, I actually know very little about gardening.

I spent years living in apartments and then a condo, and I didn’t have a house and a yard of my own until my husband and I bought our home in Silverton, Ohio in 2016. We moved just after Christmas, and we spent a few blissful yardwork-free months until we realized that we had all kinds of stuff growing in our yard and we had absolutely no idea what anything was or how to take care of it. I’ve figured out a lot of things since then, but I’m definitely still learning. Like my now-defunct roller derby blog, the intent of this blog is to share my own experiences and what I’ve learned in the hopes that it may help, or at least entertain, someone else. I’ll probably be asking for advice as much as I’ll be giving it. (Seriously, give me advice!)  

2. I’ve called this blog Gardening for Late Bloomers because I am, and pretty always have been, a late bloomer.

I started playing my first sport at age 30. I got married at age 37. I bought my first house at age 40. I planted my first thing in the ground at age 41. 

And I know I’m not alone in those last respects. In the past year, I’ve seen multiple Facebook posts from friends around my age that essentially said the same thing:

“Help! I just bought a house and I have no idea what to do with my yard. Is there a book or something I can buy?”

Friends, I was once like you. Hell, I am still like you. And yes, there are lots of gardening books out there, but to my knowledge, there’s not yet a resource that speaks to people like us — urban and suburban Gen Xers and older Millennials who become homeowners later in life and realized we know very little about what’s growing all around us. So let me know what you want to know, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find it out for you. (I didn’t spend 13 years as a journalist for nothing.)  

Also, my initials are LB. How’s that for serendipity? 

3. I live in plant hardiness zone 6.

Zone 6 runs across the middle of the U.S. and encompasses most of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. (Find your zone here.) Right now, I’m growing strictly ornamental plants and flowers. I’m also striving to use native plants, pollinators and organic and sustainable gardening practices whenever possible and practical. 

I haven’t ventured into vegetable gardening and I have no immediate plans to because of limited space and limited sunlight in my shady backyard, plus lots of deer, rabbits, squirrels, insects and other wildlife that would probably eat everything. I may eventually try container vegetable gardens on our deck, but for right now I’m concentrating on the established areas that I have. 

4. This blog is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Marjorie Norton Bishop, who passed away this year at the age of 97.

Grammy was an avid gardener who was still planting things and pulling weeds and mowing her lawn well into her 90s. This year, on what would have been her 98th birthday, I bought some zinnias in her memory because they were one of her favorite flowers. Here's a tribute I wrote to her on Instagram: 

My grandmother would have turned 98 today. I always thought it was so fitting that her birthday fell in the spring, when her enormous garden started to come alive. I never had much interest in it growing up, aside from looking forward to her strawberry rhubarb pie every summer. But I do remember how peaceful it felt to be surrounded by so many green growing things, whether we were playing croquet in my grandparents' backyard or cooling off on their airy back porch with its floor to ceiling windows. It was our own little oasis in the quintessential post-World War II suburb of West Hartford, CT, where you could hardly hear the distant hum of the highway over our voices and laughter. I didn't have a backyard of my own until December 2016. I spent much of the following spring and summer trying to figure out what was growing and how not to kill it. I sent my grandmother flowers on her 97th birthday, and in an email, I asked her to remind me what flowers she had grown in her own garden on Greystone Road, because I had long since forgotten, or never thought to ask in the first place. She loved zinnias, she told me, because they made such good cut flowers. Later, my mother reminded me that she would fill vases of them for guests. Today, in memory of my grandmother, I bought some red, yellow and bright pink zinnias that I'll plant on the sunniest side of my house. I might have been better off planting them from seeds, as I'm sure she did, and I may still sow some. But maybe because I've always been a late bloomer myself, I just didn't want to wait to enjoy them. They are as effortlessly beautiful and vibrant as she was, and I'll keep them that way for as long as I can.

35 Likes, 7 Comments - Lauren Bishop (@laurenbishop) on Instagram: "My grandmother would have turned 98 today. I always thought it was so fitting that her birthday..."

5. The photos on this blog will probably not be Pinterest-worthy.

There will be weeds. There will be bugs. There will be slugs. There will be dying plants, dead plants, flowers that refuse to bloom and allegedly deer-resistant plants that have been ravaged by the scourge of ravenous deer that boldly stroll the streets of our neighborhood. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of trying to live up to Pinterest perfection, and I have no intention of becoming any kind of Instagram influencer. You’re going to see some realness on this blog because I think we could all use more of that in life in general. I hope you enjoy it.