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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a short story about someone tending to their garden.

Posted in General on Mar 13, 2020

Submissions are closed!

Sorry, we are no longer accepting submissions. Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy Prompts account.

✍️ 85 stories

“The Memory Garden” by Ariel Kalati

          In sixteen years, she will leave the garden. She will tell the buyers of the house how to tend each patch and plant, carefully, and they’ll do it for a while and then the garden will fall apart, because they have other concerns. The soil remembers, though. The soil always remembers.          In eleven years, her firstborn child will pick unripe blueberries in mid-spring, try to taste them and recoil from the sour. She will ...

58 likes 53 comments 53 WINNER 🏆
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“Ljúfur and the Singer” by Zilla Babbitt

Ljúfur was a fierce Icelandic woman with big bones who took no giggling from anyone. She lived in New York in a large flimsy apartment building with a half-thousand other degenerate human beings. She hated all of them and would tell the plant on the windowsill that they were all stupid and the people in Iceland were a hundred times better.Ljúfur talked to plants. She had no family, no friends, no one ...

18 likes 18 comments 18
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“ A PARTNERSHIP WITHIN THE GARDEN” by Shirley Medhurst

A modest little house stands alone, surrounded by a disorderly sea of green. Not that its garden is completely unkempt, but it is hardly a neatly regimented English garden, nor is it a beautifully manicured Mediterranean oasis. It is chaotic, colourful and cheerful.   Behind the house, small square paving stones lead upwards past a pergola which leans over t...

8 likes 14 comments 14
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“A Girl and Her Garden” by Maarit Mattson

I sit upon a stray pot, tarnished and coated in a fine layer of dust. “Give me a flower Momma,” I say, my voice sweet and innocent, a toddler’s. In response, she bends over the blushing blue hydrangeas and plucks a bloom from its stem. As she turns to me her dark chestnut hair swings over her shoulder, she pushes it away.

6 likes 2 comments 2
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“The Beauty In The Little Things” by Rebecca Kaiser

Janessa hated the outdoors. She hated the smells, the sounds, and the sights. But she never had to worry about working outside in the garden, because they had a landscaper. She never had to do any work. But that was before her parents died. Janessa was to be thrown into a foster home like she wasn’t important. She had all of her things packed, and she was ready to move into her new home. Her caseworker, Amelia, brought her to the door of a quaint little cott...

6 likes 6 comments 6
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“Bed of Roses” by Jeremy Rozen

Eleanor tended to her roses every chance that she had. She admired them proudly, delighted in their luscious, full blooms and intoxicating, sweet scent. Elinor bred Hybrid Tea roses, they grew in a broad spectrum of both colour and fragrances. She was good at it too, her flowers had won first prize at the local fair, the  Double Delight and Folklore blooms stole the show two years in a row. The roses were her babies, having never born children of her own, but, since he...

5 likes 8 comments 8
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“The Butler” by Anthony Neal

Cast your eye over the Ragged Sea, where the blinding light of the sun could peel the colour from your eyes and cook your brains from the inside out (but give you a wonderous tan if you know what you’re doing!).    Don’t look at that desolate land, Ilios. Don’t give that place more than a second glance, the once powerful seat of the powerful magisters, who ruled righteously and piously, coldly content in placing the blood of the few above the safety of the many.    No – don’t look at I...

4 likes 3 comments 3
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“Mother” by Megan Derouin

Mother           Dawn was gradual, first it was just a slight lighting of the horizon line and then the sun peaked its head up from its long sleep and she awoke. The birds cried out as rays of pure light danced across the forgotten place she had come to garden. The ground was barren, scorched by children who knew no better. She was patient, she was kind, and a child could not turn her away from her task. She sang back to the birds as a slight bree...

4 likes 1 comment 1
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“The Money Tree” by Mishka Stennett

This could never be what I have heard about, I told myself, staring at it in disbelief...and yet here it was in my garden…a real money tree. I was tending to my garden when I spied it. Weeks of intermittent rain had stopped me from doing my usual weeding and shrub pruning. Today was the first truly sunny day and I had been excited to see what the rains had brought, apart from weeds of course.It was adjacent to the fence of my property; short and slim ...

4 likes 4 comments 4
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“Gardening leave” by Martin Leigh

My knees are killing me. Of all the pastimes to take up when you are in your 60’s, gardening has to be the most ridiculous. I’ve got all the equipment; gloves that say ‘sod off’ to anything up to the ferocity of a Blackthorn bush, a little seat that makes it easier on the knees but then piles on the agony when you get up, metal hand tools that buckle and snap with the slightest sniff of leverage, wellies, a sturdy wheelbarrow and of course a decade of old clothes not fit for public consumption.I know one good reason they...

4 likes 5 comments 5
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“The Rose Garden” by Steve Cripwell

The rake snagged on a clump of grass and Geordie had to pull hard to free it. When it did release, he almost fell backwards onto the muddy ground. The rake head had separated from the long, wooden handle and he smiled to himself. “This is going to take a lot longer than I thought’ he said aloud to nobody but the surrounding trees then walked over and picked up the broken tool. His smile continued as he looked around the forsaken piece of land that he had recently inher...

3 likes 3 comments 3
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“Buried Secrets” by Dawn Rae

Sheila was digging in the garden when her spade struck something metal.           She released the spade handle as if it were a hot coal and scuttled away from it like a crab on the dewy grass. She didn’t need to see what it was her spade had struck – she knew. Leaving the seedlings and garden tools where they were, Sheila hurried indoors to wet her face and try to still her racing heart.           With a hot coffee ...

3 likes 2 comments 2
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“Life Lesson” by Aisha Hashmi

The roses were beautiful, and the scented air around Aisha was heady and seductive.  As Aisha walked around her garden, the beauty of all the flowers she had planted took her breath away. Today she was teaching a group of kindergartners how to plant a flower seed. A teacher had approached her last week about the beauty of her garden, and asked her if she could plan a field trip for her class. Aisha, touched by interest in her garden, readily agreed. The kids were about to be here, and Aisha was making sure th...

3 likes 2 comments 2
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“This Beautiful Earth” by William Hargrove

Clare’s eyes swung back and forth across the plot of mulch which held her precious plants so tightly. She admired the beautiful things that they were, the gorgeous life-givers her mother had taught her to behold. Clare patted the soil absentmindedly, swirling it in abstract patterns under her palm and letting its soft homely feel seep through her fingers. She thought back to years prior, a simpler time, when she and her mother would garden from light until dark, getting the...

3 likes 2 comments 2
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“The Poison Garden” by Sara Southard

It had been awhile since Rosie had seen a day quite so perfect. In her backyard, she turned her face up to the warm sun as a cool breeze caressed her cheek. The peonies had come up beautifully this year, the blooms even larger than Ethan’s hand.Her garden was the finest in the whole neighborhood. Even “Little Miss Perfect” Lizzie Reilly hadn’t anything that could come anywhere close to comparing. In the winter she spent hours in her garage workspace planning beds and tending to the cuttings she kept under a grow light. During warme...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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Contest #31

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This week's theme: The Ordinary

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Ended on 23:59 - Mar 06, 2020 EST

Won by Ariel Kalati 🏆

Title: The Memory Garden

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