The Garden That
Grew Itself

Once upon a time, at the edge of a great meadow, there stood a garden.

It was not an ordinary garden. The flowers were taller than most gardens grow, and brighter than most gardens dare. There were roses the color of fire and lilies as white as morning, bluebells that rang when the wind touched them, and sunflowers so tall they had conversations with the clouds.

And every flower in the garden was very proud.

Not proud of their colors, though their colors were magnificent. Not proud of their height, though several of them were quite tall. No — every flower in the garden was proud of one thing above all else:

It had chosen to bloom.

"I decided to open my petals on a Tuesday," the Rose said, tossing her scarlet head. "I remember it clearly. The sun came up, and I thought to myself: Today, I will bloom. And so I did."

"I chose yellow," the Sunflower announced, stretching toward the sky. "I considered blue. I considered purple. But yellow suited me, and I made the decision, and here I am."

"I chose to grow near the wall," the Ivy said, creeping upward, "because I prefer the shade. It was entirely my idea."

The flowers spoke this way all day long. They congratulated each other on their excellent decisions. They held little ceremonies where each flower would stand up (which was easy, since they were already standing) and tell the story of how it had chosen to bloom, chosen its color, chosen its place in the garden.

It was the most important thing about them, they believed — that they had done it themselves.

Now, at the center of the garden stood an old oak tree.

The oak was older than the garden. Older, some said, than the meadow. Its trunk was wider than six flowers standing shoulder to shoulder, and its roots went down so deep that not even the earthworms knew where they ended. It had been there before the first seed was planted, and it would be there long after the last petal fell.

The oak never said much. It listened to the flowers tell their stories, and it said nothing. Sometimes a leaf would fall from one of its branches — slowly, as if it were thinking — and the flowers would wonder what the oak thought about things. But they never asked.

They were too busy congratulating themselves.

One morning, something new appeared at the edge of the garden.

It was very small. A pale green shoot, barely an inch tall, with two tiny leaves that trembled in the breeze. It didn't have a flower yet. It didn't have a color. It didn't even know what kind of plant it was.

The flowers noticed immediately.

"Hello, little one," the Rose said. "What have you decided to be?"

The shoot looked up. "I — I don't know."

"Well, you must decide," the Sunflower said firmly. "That's how it works. You choose what to be, and then you become it. I chose to be a sunflower. The Rose chose to be a rose. What do you choose?"

The shoot trembled. "I don't think I chose to be here at all," it whispered. "I just — woke up. I was in the dark for a long time. Then one day I felt something warm above me, and I started pushing upward, and now I'm here. But I didn't decide any of it. It just happened."

The flowers stared at each other.

"That's ridiculous," said the Ivy. "Of course you decided. Everyone decides."

"Perhaps you've forgotten," the Rose said kindly. "It happens. But trust me — you chose this. We all did."

The little shoot said nothing more. But late that evening, when the other flowers had closed their petals for the night, it turned toward the old oak tree.

"Excuse me," the shoot said. "May I ask you something?"

A leaf drifted down from the oak's highest branch. "You may."

"Did you choose to grow here?"

The oak was quiet for a long time. When it finally spoke, its voice was low and deep, the kind of voice that sounds like it has been traveling upward from somewhere far below the earth.

"No," the shoot said. "I was already there when I woke up."

"No. It just — broke. Something inside me pushed, but I didn't tell it to push."

"No."

The shoot almost laughed. "Of course not."

The oak let another leaf fall. Slowly.

"Yes," the shoot said quietly.

The shoot was quiet for a long time after that. The moon came up over the meadow, and the stars switched on one by one — which is another thing no one in the garden had chosen, though none of them had thought about that either.

"But the other flowers," the shoot said at last. "They all say they chose. They remember choosing."

The oak creaked gently, which is how old oaks laugh.

"So who did it?" the shoot asked.

"No," said the shoot. "Never."

"Tell me," the shoot whispered.

And the oak did.

The Gardener, the oak said, came to the garden before it was a garden. When it was only dirt and stone and silence. He came with a leather bag over his shoulder and a lantern in his hand — though there was no one to see the light, and nowhere to hang it, and no reason to be there at all except that he had decided to make something beautiful in a place where nothing was.

He knelt in the dark. He dug each hole with his own hands. He placed each seed — one by one — in the exact spot he had chosen for it. Not randomly. Not carelessly. He knew what each seed would become. He knew the Rose would be red and the Sunflower yellow and the Bluebells would ring in the wind. He knew all of it before he covered the first seed with soil.

"And then?" the shoot asked.

"And when they finally bloomed —"

The shoot sat with this for a long time. Around it, the garden slept. The Rose's head was bowed. The Sunflower leaned against the wall. The Bluebells were silent.

"So I didn't choose to be here," the shoot said. It was not a sad voice. It was a wondering voice — the voice of someone discovering that the story is bigger than they thought.

"And my color — when I bloom — I won't choose that either?"

"Is that — is that a sad thing?"

The oak's branches moved in the wind, and for a moment the moonlight came through the leaves in a way that looked almost like a smile.

"Yes. More than anything."

"Yes."

The next morning, the flowers opened their petals and began their usual conversations about their excellent choices. The Rose told her Tuesday story again. The Sunflower explained about choosing yellow. The Ivy described its strategic decision regarding the wall.

The little shoot listened and said nothing.

But something had changed. Overnight, it had grown another inch. Two new leaves had appeared — larger than the first, and darker, and steadier in the wind. And at the very tip of the shoot, so small you would miss it unless you were looking, there was the faintest beginning of a bud.

The shoot did not know what color it would be.

But it knew — with the kind of knowing that goes deeper than memory, deeper than choosing, deeper than anything a flower can explain — that whoever had planted it in the dark had already decided.

And it was content to wait and see.

It is still growing, that little shoot.
And the Gardener still comes in the dark.
He always has.
He always will.