Looking Back at My First Garden - 20 Years Ago

I was looking through some old photos today on my computer and found this picture of my very first garden where I am standing knee deep in the flowers. I look so serious here. I believe the picture was taken in 2003, when we first moved to Nevada. I love visiting old photographs like this. I was beyond excited to have a place that I could create a garden for my family. I was eager to learn everything that I could. It was a tiny garden but I made it amazing and packed as much as I could into the small space that I had to work with. It was at the back side of a hill with open space and no homes behind us and no fencing. I remember it being the perfect little place for me to let my creativity explore.

My favorite thing to grow at that time was tomatoes and made some great canned salsa that year. Sunflowers and zinnia were my favorite flowers. I also started becoming very interested in taking pictures of the flowers in my garden and also enjoyed the beneficial insects that visited. 

Macro photography was a lot of fun and this allowed me to also teach my children about them and share the excitement about the garden.

Here are a few pictures that I took during my first few years as a new gardener.

I had a box with lots of extra tiles, so I sprinkled them loosely on the ground to add a splash of color and add interest. There is one pink spider flower right in the middle of the zinnia to the left.

One of the first things that I grew were zinnias and I remember them being so amazing! If you are new to gardening and want an easy to grow flower, I suggest zinnias. They bloom for a very long time. They are still one of my favorites today and my garden is not complete without them. The ones that are pictured here are California Giants. Now several years forward, my favorites now include Oklahoma Salmon and also the Benary varieties like the Giant wine and also the Carmine Pink. Over the years I have noticed that I am more fond of pink flowers than I ever was before.

I grew these cute sunflowers and created a pretty bouquet standing out in the garden. These cuties are called Teddy Bear Sunflowers. I grew some here in the summer of 2022 but they were not near as stunning as you see pictured here. I think that I could try again next summer and hope they might do better.