A few years ago in late spring, I was cutting back wilted daffodil foliage in my front yard. I was incredibly frustrated that I had to do it. The leaves looked like they were melting into the ground, yellow and mushy. I heard myself mutter, “I despise gardening.”

Yes, that’s right. Just a few years ago, I hated gardening. I thought it was a waste of time and I didn’t get its appeal. I couldn’t tell a weed from a perennial (and if you can’t either, that’s okay - I’m happy you’re reading this because it may change how you look at gardening).

The magical garden of my childhood

I grew up surrounded by my grandmother’s incredible flower garden. I spent all of my childhood summers at my grandparents’ house, in the outskirts of Bucharest, Romania’s capital. I was surrounded by hundreds of flowers, a welcome break from being cooped up in my parents’ one-bedroom apartment in a soviet-style highrise.

In a small front yard no bigger than 1,500 square feet, she grew dahlias, many kinds of roses, tuberoses, gladiolas, hydrangeas, a sour cherry tree, a peach tree, rudbeckias, cosmos, stonecrop, poppies, phlox and many others that I can’t remember. People passing by would stop to admire the garden and if she was outside, inevitably she would strike up a conversation with them.

Flowers were all around me. I studied them, smelled them, stole petals to stick to my nails, looked for seeds and caught butterflies by their wings.

Years after the house was sold and the garden replaced by a new construction, I attempted to grow low-maintenance houseplants. The result was always the same - early and dramatic demise. Whenever the subject of growing any kind of plants came up, I’d just say that all I could do to plants was kill them.

A few zinnia seedlings walk into my life

Mother’s Day 2019. My daughter, then in third grade, brought home a plastic cup with a few spindly seedlings cautiously stretching out.

“What are these?” I ask.

“Zinnias! I grew them at school,” she replies. I had no idea what she was talking about. But I was impressed that my 9-year old had accomplished something that I never could - grow a plant from seed.

I took the cup and put it on the kitchen windowsill thinking what could I do to keep the seedlings alive, at least until my daughter forgot about them.

Later that day, I googled “how to grow zinnias” and read some information on the Chicago Botanic Garden website. “Low maintenance.” “One of the easiest flowers to grow.” “Thrives in any soil.” Hmm, maybe I can give these baby plants a try, I thought.

A few days later, I dug a small hole in a mulched corner of our front yard, watered and walked away. Over the next few days I checked on the clump of seedlings (I didn’t thin them - the concept of plant spacing didn’t exist to me). They kept going. And going. And going. A few weeks later, they were a foot tall. At about the same time, I started to think they could survive after all. With that optimistic outlook, I decided to buy some vegetable seeds, a few containers, and a bag of potting soil, and see if I could grow something.

The seeds I got were some tomatoes, carrots, an “edible garden” mix and some marigolds. I also bought a rosemary plant and some mint. Everything that I sowed took off quickly and grew spectacularly well considering that I had no idea what I was doing. 

Riding this wave of optimism, I started to read all the books on container gardening that I could find at the library. I absorbed every bit of information and started to realize that you are not born a gardener, you become one when the time is right.

By late summer, I had harvested several handfuls of tomatoes, a few carrots, loads of mint and rosemary and a couple of radishes.

And the zinnias? They kept on going and gave back in the most unexpected way.

When the first zinnia buds bloomed, I called my mother to show her how well they were doing. I turned the camera on and the second she saw them, she exclaimed: “These are zinnias, grandma’s favorite flowers!” 

I was speechless. 

This accidental flower growing in my first-ever garden, took me back to my childhood and brought a rush of warm memories.

“Grandma always wanted a painting with zinnias to hang on the living room wall,” continued my mom. “Do you remember the poppy flower painting I bought her?” I did. “I got that one because I couldn’t find one with zinnias. She liked it but regretted not having her beloved zinnias instead.”

Zinnias. The lovely, unfussy bloom that entered my life on Mother’s Day 2019 thanks to my daughter. Just like a tiny seed waiting for the right conditions to sprout, my love for gardening awoke and has grown fuller and stronger ever since.