Baumle makes career around gardening

CINDY WOOD/independent feature writer

Kylee Baumle has got one of the greenest thumbs in the area. Her landscape and gardening talents are proof of that.

After the last few years of drought and seemingly brown everything, local gardeners and growers were given a reprieve this year, and Baumle couldn’t be happier about it. “We’ve had so many hot and dry summers it was just getting ridiculous,” Baumle said, adding “my husband and I were just driving ourselves crazy with watering.”

It was a lot to water. Baumle and her husband have about an acre of land near Wayne Trace High School, with much of that land used to grow everything from petunias to peanuts. It’s a lifestyle Baumle undoubtedly picked up from her mother, Louise Hartwig, a local green-thumber herself who was instrumental in bringing the much-loved Children’s Garden to Smiley Park.

“I guess we just kind of speak the same language,” Baumle said of her mother. “I grew up with it and she just always gardened. I’m sure she wished that I had taken it up seriously earlier than I did, but better late than never,” she added with a laugh.

A dental hygienist by trade and mother to two daughters, Baumle just didn’t have the time to devote to gardening until her daughters were grown and she could cut back on her work schedule. A trip in 2005 with her mother to the Cleveland Flower Show sealed the deal. “I really think that’s when I fell in love with it,” she said, adding, “everything I saw there I wanted to come home and do it here.”

Starting out small, Baumle and her husband, Roman, have added elements to the landscape and gardens every year. And just when she thinks they’ve reached capacity, “I see something and think ‘ooh, I want to grow that,’” she said, adding “I say all the time there’s always room for Jello, and I guess there’s always room for another plant.”

With some encouragement from her oldest daughter, Kara, Baumle began writing a blog about her gardening adventures and Baumle quickly found an online audience who shared her passion. “At that time, I thought blogs were just free web space that people fill up with whatever, so I really wasn’t too enthusiastic about it,” Baumle said.

But before too long, Baumle’s blog was getting quite a bit of attention, not only from readers, but from several companies and vendors. “Companies began asking me to try their products and write about them, and I guess everything kind of snowballed from there,” she said.

That snowball turned into an avalanche, so to speak. Baumle began getting writing jobs for different gardening companies, and she was also contacted by different magazines looking for a writer. Baumle began building her resume and has written for big-name companies such as Troy-Bilt and also regularly for Ohio Gardener Horticulture.

Additionally, she is the garden book review editor for Horticulture, and last year, Baumle and her co-writer signed a contract to write a book that came out in April of this year.

The book, Indoor Plants Décor: Design Stylebook for Houseplants, is available on Amazon. P. Allen Smith, author of the best-selling Bringing the Garden Indoors: Containers, Crafts and Bouquets for Every Room, said this of Baumle’s book: “Kylee Baumle and Jenny Peterson’s passion for designing with indoor plants makes them the perfect guides to help us make new, fresh and stylish additions to every room. The brilliance of Indoor Plant Décor is its clarity in communicating their creative ideas.”

“If you would have told me ten years ago that I would be speaking about gardening and have published a book about gardening, I probably would have said you were crazy,” Baumle said, adding, “I’m so happy I’ve been able to have a second career doing something I love and I’m so passionate about.”

These days, you’ll probably find Baumle in her gardens, tending to her plants, flowers, shrubs, or whatever else she might be growing in that particular year. This summer, it’s been all about the rice. “We grow quite a variety of edibles, including the common veggies, but I always try to grow something new every year,” Baumle said, adding that growing rice was just something she wanted to try. “I probably won’t end up with enough rice to actually make something with, but it’s just the experience of growing it that I enjoy.”

This is the third year that Baumle has been growing peanuts, an idea she came across after visiting a nursery in Cleveland. “I bought three peanut plants, and really didn’t think I’d have anything when I pulled them in October, but I had about eight peanuts on each of the plants.”

It’s been a long labor of love for the local gardener, but she’s more than happy to put in the time and effort. Her husband, at times, is along for the ride, but is happy to support his wife. “I’m definitely more interested in it than he is, but he’s always supported me.”

At times, that has meant backbreaking work for the couple, but the end result is always satisfying when flowers are in bloom, and the smells of summer permeate the air. “I just absolutely love everything about it,” Baumle said, adding “I really love seeing how you go from this to that. We go to the grocery store and buy food and a lot of times don’t even give a thought to how it got to that state. We just take it for granted, and a lot of times it’s all around us.”