The Home of Gardenblogger Susan Harris
I’ve posted it with illustrations over on my Garden Center Blogger blog. Thanks to Lawn and Garden Retailer Magazine for asking me to write a feature for them about the Mahoney’s Garden Centers blog. And here’s the article on the magazine’s website, without illustration.
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It’s brand new, less than a week old, but its mission is clear – to ferret out and report on what’s turning on Baby Boomers these days. It’s launched in Beta, that is, which means it’s feeling its way content-wise, and sitting on a plain WordPress template (the terrific Thesis Theme, also used for this blog), awaiting a custom design down the road when I know where it’s going.
I CAN report that it turns out that going around town looking for turn-ons is even more fun than reporting on gardening events – I know, who knew?! I’ll be chatting with some of the many musicians who’ve congregated in this music-filled town, and interesting people all over the world, as I find them.
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If you’ve noticed fewer and fewer gardening stories here and more totally off-topic stories – about fitness and music – that’s no coincidence. That’s just a preview of where this blog is going.
See, I’ve been blogging about gardening for 5 and a half years now. And currently I cover gardening on GardenRant and two garden-center blogs – totaling 5-8 posts every single week. That’s more than enough from me on the subject of gardening, which is why I haven’t been updating here very often.
Subjects that DO interest me include:
I was chatting with my garden designer friend Susan Morrison about all this and with her background in marketing, she quickly summed this all up as “Boomer lifestyle” topics, so I’m using that as a shorthand description of my next “new” blog – really an old one redesigned and redirected.
From Takoma Gardener to…
I first gave this blog the super-modest, super-local name of Takoma Gardener – because I live in a town called Takoma Park. Too local.
Next, I created my “Sustainable Gardening” website of longer articles to help my garden-coaching clients, and decided to attach this blog to it as part of a package that might, just might, attract enough sponsors to be a real income stream. That explains the current blog title, but notice any sponsor ads in the sidebar? They’re gone – there weren’t enough sponsors and I didn’t really enjoy pursuing them. I enjoyed even less the MAD pursuit of traffic required to attract and keep sponsors.
So this week my fabulous designer/developer (Julia Holland) will be updating this blog as Gardener Susan, which is also my Twitter name. This is now my personal blog about anything I want, including but not limited to gardening (as if I’ve ever been strictly gardening here!)
And coming soon – a blog just for Boomers.
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TweetEver prepare and then give a talk to an audience that doesn’t exactly overwhelm you with its size? That’s how I felt in Chicago, where the four GardenRanters spoke to just 25 people. But hey, that’s a lot compared to the other talks I attended there (only seven to hear Mary Ann Newcomer? Come on!) I’m told the attendees at the Independent Garden Center Show are too busy taking care of business, and that makes sense. But now, with this 7.5-minute video, I bet I can reach more than 25 people, with no travel required.
A technical note. You may recall my blogging about taking video production workshop, buying cameras and video editing software – I was gung-ho yet frustrated. So, I’ve given up on all that, except for the super-easy-yet- limited Flip camera that I use to capture my kittens at their cutest. (While eating, sleeping – really, when aren’t they cute?)
But for this video I used a program that’s every bit as easy as the Flip to use – Photo Story 3, free from Microsoft. For the narration I used a $8 microphone, and PowerPoint for compiling the images, which I then saved in jpeg and uploaded into Photo Story 3. The program automatically inserts transitions (as you see here) and pans and zooms (which I disabled for this video). And it’s easy to add music – instead of or over the narration. The result is YouTube-compatible.
I’ve done one other Photo Story video, this time using music instead of narration, and keeping those pans and zooms. It’s the National Arboretum in Winter.
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Big news on the work front, about that second career as a garden writer I’ve been plugging away at since my last employer went belly-up in 2006.
Last winter I was hired by Mahoney’s, the Boston-based independent garden center, to help them set up, edit, write and launch a blog. I flew up there to meet the team in February, and we decided to bring on the wonderful Layanee DeMerchant as the local blogger. Layanee’s super-qualified – with a degree in landscape architecture, a great blog and a weekly radio show out of Boston. She even knows the Mahoney’s gang because she represented a line of organic garden products for years, so she knows the plants and the garden center business in that whole region. On top of which, she’s lovable and easy to get along with. That’ll be a big help in her new role as online and in-person ambassador for the company – their Networker-in-Chief.
So Layanee and I have watched in anticipation as Mahoney’s whole website was moved, and last week the blog went live!
So, what’s there? Two posts every week by yours truly and at least one a week by Layanee, plus all sorts of contributions by their in-house experts. We’re trying to make it as easy as humanly possible for people who already have full workloads to also contribute to the blog – they just send us an email and we do the rest.
And this next part is particularly fun: Once a month we’ll have a “special guest blogger” – usually a gardening expert/writer there in New England - and it’s been fun soliciting them via the garden writers email group and personal contacts. We’ve gotten definite yesses so far from these New Englanders: Dominique Browning, the last editor-in-chief of House and Garden Magazine, and a hot author. Tovah Martin and Karen Davis Cutler, both well known authors of book and magazine fame. And Carol Stocker, the garden writer for the Boston Globe. People seem eager to be a part of this! Publishers have contacted me to offer posts by their garden-book authors, and free books for us to give away to readers.
Readers may notice a pattern here – of networking like crazy – and this is another example. (See Lawn Reform, DC Urban Gardeners, etc.) This time it actually pays, and that’s progress.
Next, the Big Promotion
We’re already promoting the blog in “beta” or “soft launch”, but the real hoopla will start next week, with an official-looking press release and emails to everyone on our blogroll and list of websites. (Who dat? All the gardening bloggers in the region. The best sources of regional gardening info online. All the gardening and greening groups in Eastern Mass and beyond. (Mahoney’s customer region.) And of course public gardens in the region; ditto local food websites. And anything else we find out our new readers want to know about.
Also, a Facebook “Like” page and Twitter account are being set up as I type. We don’t plan to Tweet or update throughout the day, there being no evidence that that kind of social media involvement is needed, but we’ll do it enough. (Events in the region, in-store events and specials, all new blog posts and longer articles for the website.)
Website Content, Too
Oh, speaking of which! I spent all day yesterday reviewing the long, researched articles on this very website to find the best ones to offer Mahoneys and Homestead Gardens for free to put on their own websites. I selected 26 articles covering topics like low-maintenance gardening, lawn care, and compost. I think garden centers need to provide really helpful content like this on their websites and blogs, but who’s supposed to write it for them? They sure don’t have garden writers on staff to do it and it’s no wonder they sometimes just use the marketing pieces offered to them by the industry (Scotts-MiracleGro, but others, too). It’s hard to win reader confidence that way, (understatement alert), so I’m happy I have an alternative to offer.
Then What?
Well, we provide gardening and plant information and on the local scene, we cover the gardening and greening community, profiling and promoting, say, the Master Gardeners, public gardens, community gardens, and farmers’ markets in the area. Those are the kinds of people-packed stories that can go viral, spreading link love across the Internets. We promote everything via Facebook and Twitter, and who-knows-what-else. (Youtube? Oh, I hope so.)
But you know, this is pretty new territory. I follow corporate social marketing closely and can find lots of big national corporations that blog, and I see blogs touted as the “hub” of a company’s social networking strategy and I totally agree. But just try to find examples of local retailers doing it, much less doing it well. And no surprise – the local dry cleaner, accountant and dentist can just have a 3-page website and be done with it but garden centers? They have a whole lotta teaching to do. Garden centers sell products that the public doesn’t even know how to keep alive, much less look good over time. Customers want to start growing food, they want to learn how to do right by the environment, and they need help sifting through all the controversy surrounding every single plant they grow or product or practice they employ. This ain’t consumer electronics.
And for real teaching, no 140-character Tweet or even longer Facebook updates will do. This kind of social media campaign needs that hub – the blog.
What Other Local Retailers Need to Teach?
Now I’m wondering what other companies need to teach as well as sell products – craft and yarn stores maybe? Indie hardware stores, definitely. But what else?
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TweetI try to keep my whining about back-the-scenes IT problems to a minimum but can I just say it’s been three weeks since I’ve been able to publish a new post, or even upload a frigging 
photo! Finally, that’s all behind us – fingers crossed. This blog and website are safely hosted by a new company (Hostgator) and ready for action!
What’s Happened in 3 Weeks?
Coming up soon
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TweetI sure HOPE you notice the biggest change here – the simpler and to-my-eyes much prettier design by Julia Holland. The design covers both my old blog and my two-year-old website coz the website (static pages) has been moved to WordPress where I can fuss with it much more easily than I ever did using Dreamweaver templates (ugh!), which are so outdated it’s hard to find people to help with them anymore.
Financial News
And while Julia and I tried to find the perfect, unobtrusive ways to display sponsor logos, I started losing faith in the whole sponsor idea altogether, and decided to discontinue the practice. The scheme just wasn’t bringing in enough money to justify the effort, especially the effort to have enough traffic to impress sponsors. Don’t worry; I won’t be junking up the place with Google ads – they’re also too much trouble (and reader annoyance) for so little income. So now the graphics in the sidebar are all unpaid-for – yay!
(Damn, what am I saying? It’s not like I have a fat pension or health insurance paid for by someone else.)
But (finally) I have regular income from garden writing – for garden centers – and have even felt secure enough to – wait for it, family members who’ve expressed concern for the state of my home – hire a maid! Yeah, I can hardly believe it either. Ditto hiring someone to move 7 cubic yards of mulch for me (more on that soon). And even went to the Healthy Back Store and brought home an expensive but super-comfortable chair because hell, I’m worth it! Oh, yeah, I’m living the high life here.
What’s missing on Ye Olde Website
PHOTOS! I won’t bore you with HOW it happened but dozens of photos were lost in the move. They’ll be found and replaced when I get around to it, frankly. (I need a break from website-fiddling).
But on a happier note, with no sponsors I see no need to continue my monthly newsletters, which took 6-7 hours to create, test and send. Anyway, lots of short news items that I used to save up for the newsletter are now being Tweeted relatively quickly, and that seems like just the right place to use them.
Speaking of Social Networking
Figuring out how to use Twitter is a challenge, though. Sure, everyone says you absolutely have to Tweet if you expect any career success, ever (yes, almost that dire a command) but what to do if you really don’t enjoy it? I’m taking a cue from the journalists I follow and Tweeting mainly substantive, on-topic links. That’ll just have to suffice.
I love Facebook, though, and credit it with all sorts of reunions with college boyfriends and just this week, a friend from kindergarten I hadn’t seen since the ’70s. Also, people don’t update nearly as often on Facebook (thank you!) and the updates aren’t jam-packed with symbols and abbreviations (#@RT; need I go on?) And it seems tailor-made for following my Left-Coast relatives and friends I like to hear from occasionally, just occasionally.
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If you’ve found your way here via AgelessNorthShore’s recommended 14 Blogs 4 U, I invite you to look around. You’ll see from the categories that I cover not just what’s happening in my garden but news in the eco-gardening world and whatever I’m up to at the moment. Usually it’s organizing for good causes and no money (see graphics in sidebar) but finally, it’s for pay! Just launched this week is Garden Center Blogger, where my partners and I help independent garden centers communicate online successfully, and get the very best local gardenbloggers hired in the bargain!
It’s all part of what I used to call My So-Called Second Career, in which I tried to cobble together a living as a garden writer. (For my first 30 years after college I worked as a “court” reporter in Congress and the courts of D.C., when I wasn’t doing stints at a string of nonprofits that started with Common Cause.) Finally after attempting what seems like dozens of possible revenue channels, it’s looking like using my blogging experience to help companies in my industry succeed might just be the perfect fit. To clarify, helping companies that I really WANT to succeed. So even to a ’60s activist, it doesn’t feel like selling out to corporate America or whatever nightmare vision used to haunt us.
But back to Ageless North Shore – I THANK them for including me and I feel honored! I’m also a fan of Time Goes By, whose list of “elderbloggers” the folks at Ageless North Shore perused to find their favorites. Ronni Bennett does an awesome job and I’ve enjoyed contributing a couple of movie reviews to Time Goes By.
Related posts, including a couple on the team blog GardenRant, include:
Indie Garden Centers, Start Your Blogs
Garden Center Blogger Wants You
Memories of Working with Senator Kennedy
In Which my Secret Day Job is Revealed
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Gardenbloggers may not be in it for the money – hope not! – but we happily lap up any smidgen of recognition that may come our way, so thanks, y’all! Now winning for Best Organic Gardening Blog raises the question of how organics and sustainability are connected, so here’s what they mean to me:
Principles of organic gardening are basic, the very foundation of good gardening. Then sustainabile gardening goes on to pay attention to protecting and improving water and air quality, and providing for wildlife. It even pays attention to the homo sapiens who create gardens and keeping them going. So another area of overlap is with permaculture, also a big-picture approach that includes humans in the equation.
Now excuse me while I peruse the other finalists for ideas. The full results are here.
Next up, GardenRant also won a Blotanical - for Best Design – so thanks again! I’m happy to recommend the folks who created our header – the very cool House of Tears Design in Kansas City, MO. I found them via either eLance or CraigsList – I used both and don’t remember which they responded to.
Oh, and a big thank-you and virtual hug to Stuart Robinson, the wizard behind Blotanical.com and these awards, for his hard work. He’s a true mover and shaker in our little world.
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Being interviewed by other gardening bloggers is so much fun, I just keep saying yes. Recently it’s been to Robin Wedewer, of Bumblebeeblog and now the National Gardening Examiner, and to Stuart Robinson, everyone’s favorite Australian gardener and author of Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas and the gardenblog directory on steroids, Blotanical.
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