Backwards Garden

The Backwards Garden

I. The First Bloom

Eleanor Thorne had always known there was something peculiar about the Victorian greenhouse she'd inherited from her grandmother. The glass panes, clouded with age and draped in stubborn vines, seemed to hold secrets in their warped reflections. But it wasn't until the morning she found the first anomalous chrysanthemum that she understood just how peculiar it truly was.

The flower caught her eye because it was dying – or rather, it should have been dying. Its petals were brown and curled inward, typical of a bloom well past its prime. Yet as she watched, cup of morning tea growing cold in her hands, the petals slowly uncurled. The brown receded like a tide, replaced by vibrant purple hues she'd never seen in any chrysanthemum variety.

"Impossible," she whispered, setting down her tea with trembling hands. But there it was, becoming younger before her eyes.

II. The Pattern Emerges

Over the next few weeks, Eleanor documented everything. Her botanical journals, once filled with methodical observations about growth rates and soil pH, now contained entries that defied logic. Plants weren't growing – they were un-growing. Seeds didn't sprout; instead, fully formed plants would appear as if from nowhere, mature and vibrant, then gradually youth themselves into seedlings before disappearing entirely.

The greenhouse became her obsession. She installed cameras, took time-lapse videos, and spent countless hours observing. The phenomenon wasn't consistent across all plants. Only certain specimens exhibited the temporal reversal, and they seemed to cluster around the greenhouse's original Victorian-era plantings.

But it was what she saw in the blooms that truly changed everything.

III. Windows to the Past

The first vision came through a backwards-blooming rose. As she leaned in to examine its petals – watching them transition from withered brown to deep crimson – the center of the flower seemed to deepen, like a well of dark water. And in that darkness, she saw movement.

A young woman in a high-necked dress was tending to the same greenhouse, her movements precise and deliberate. Eleanor recognized the brooch at her throat – the same one that now sat in her jewelry box upstairs. Her great-great-grandmother, Adelaide.

The vision lasted only moments, but it left Eleanor breathless. Each reverse-blooming flower, she soon discovered, offered a different glimpse. Through the chrysanthemum, she watched children playing in Victorian garb. Through a peculiar orchid, she witnessed the greenhouse's construction, piece by piece, in reverse.

IV. The Temporal Garden

Journal Entry, September 15th:

The backwards plants seem to follow their own internal logic. They appear fully formed, as if planted by ghosts, then gradually young themselves into nothingness. But the truly extraordinary part is what they show us. Each bloom is like a lens, focused on a specific moment in the past. The older the plant's lineage in the greenhouse, the further back it can see.

I've started mapping the temporal relationships. Roses near the east wall show scenes from the 1890s. The orchids by the fountain reach back to the 1870s. And the mysterious night-blooming cereus in the corner... I'm afraid to look too deeply into that one. The darkness in its blooms suggests it might reach back further than I'm prepared to see.

V. The Price of Looking Back

Eleanor's obsession grew alongside her understanding. She began to neglect her regular gardening clients, her friends, even basic self-care. The greenhouse consumed her thoughts. She started talking to the plants – not the usual gardener's encouragements, but desperate questions about the past, about family secrets, about paths not taken.

The breaking point came when she discovered she could influence the visions. By carefully pruning the backwards-growing plants at specific points in their reverse lifecycle, she could focus the temporal windows on particular moments. She spent days watching her grandmother as a young woman, learning the secrets of the greenhouse. She witnessed family quarrels long forgotten, love affairs never recorded in any history.

But there was a cost. Each manipulation of the backwards plants seemed to strain reality itself. Small temporal anomalies began appearing outside the greenhouse. Her wristwatch ran backwards for hours at a time. Food in her kitchen would unexpectedly age or become mysteriously fresh again.

VI. The Choice

On a frost-covered morning in late autumn, Eleanor faced a decision. The night-blooming cereus, the oldest plant in the greenhouse, was preparing for its reverse-bloom. Its buds, ancient and mysterious, promised visions from the earliest days of the property, perhaps even before the greenhouse existed.

But as she watched it begin its temporal journey backward, she noticed cracks appearing in the glass panes around her. Not physical cracks – these were something else entirely. They seemed to split the air itself, showing glimpses of multiple times simultaneously: Victorian era, World War II, the present, all layered like transparent sheets.

Journal Entry, October 31st:

The greenhouse is breaking down. Or perhaps time itself is breaking down within it. The backwards plants have shown me wonders, but they were never meant to be windows. They were meant to be reminders that everything flows in both directions, that growth and decay are the same process viewed from different perspectives.

I understand now what grandmother meant in her final letter: "The greenhouse shows us what we need to see, but wisdom lies in knowing when to look away."

VII. The Natural Order

In the end, Eleanor made her choice. She began carefully removing the backwards plants, not all at once, but gradually, thoughtfully. Each one she transferred to a special section of her garden outside, where they could complete their reverse lifecycles naturally, without the greenhouse's temporal amplification.

The regular plants remained, growing forward as plants should, reaching toward the future instead of the past. She kept a few of the milder backwards specimens – the chrysanthemums that had started it all, a rose bush that showed only recent history – as reminders of what she had learned.

The greenhouse slowly healed. The temporal cracks sealed themselves. Her watches began keeping proper time again. But Eleanor was changed forever, carrying with her the knowledge that time, like nature, was far more complex and beautiful than she had ever imagined.

Epilogue

These days, Eleanor still tends her greenhouse, though with different eyes. She's learned to appreciate the forward motion of growth as much as the backwards flow of decay. Sometimes, on quiet evenings, she sits among her normal plants and remembers the visions she witnessed in those strange blooms.

And occasionally, when the light is just right and the air is perfectly still, she catches glimpses in ordinary flowers – brief flickers of the past, like memories rising up through clear water. But now she understands: these aren't windows to be forced open, but gentle reminders that all times exist together in the eternal garden of memory.

She's started keeping a new journal, but this one records the future she's growing toward, not the past she's leaving behind. After all, she thinks, as she waters her plants in the golden evening light, every garden grows in both directions. We just have to know which way to look.

The End