By Beth Moore
Community Contributor
There’s a saying gardeners like to quote: First year it sleeps. Second year it creeps. Third year it leaps. It’s comforting. Reassuring. It suggests effort will be rewarded on a neat and predictable schedule.
Ginkgos, apparently, did not get the memo.
Ginkgo biloba has been around for more than 200 million years, earning its reputation as a “living fossil.” Individual trees can live for centuries; some temple ginkgos in China are believed to be over a thousand years old.
When you’ve outlived dinosaurs, urgency loses its appeal. We bought ours in 2007. My husband worked at the nursery, which softened the blow slightly, but it was still—by any honest accounting—the most we’d ever spent on a single plant. Possibly the entire year’s landscaping budget in one go.
She had delicate, maidenhair-fern leaves that turned a shocking acid yellow in the fall. We were smitten.
We planted her in pride of place.
And waited.
And waited.
She didn’t creep. She didn’t leap. She simply slept. For ten years.
I fertilized. I cajoled. I whispered sweet nothings in Mandarin. No response.
Time moved on, as it tends to do.
When we moved house, I dug up the plants I couldn’t bear to leave. My husband brought the ginkgo. We’d paid too much to abandon her, but also—perhaps—she deserved another chance. Somewhere else might suit her better.
She sulked. Properly sulked. Her main trunk, the leader, died. We were heartbroken. It felt final.
And then something quietly miraculous happened.
She sent up shoots. A new leader emerged. She put down roots. Slowly, deliberately, she began to thrive.
That’s when I understood the lesson she’d been teaching all along.
Growth doesn’t follow our timelines. Dormancy isn’t failure. Loss doesn’t mean the end of the story. Sometimes survival looks like waiting, and resilience looks like starting again from an unexpected place.
Every autumn now, when her leaves turn that impossible yellow, I think about patience. About how long a decade really is. About how life can appear stalled while doing important, invisible work underground.
The ginkgo never rushed for approval. She didn’t perform on cue. She simply endured—and then, when she was ready, she grew.
And honestly? That feels like a pretty good way to live.
