The Garden of Small Beginnings

Lilian "Lili" Girvan is a textbook illustrator and single mother living in Los Angeles, more than three years after her husband, Dan, died in a car accident fifty feet from their front door. She still considers herself married to him, talks to him regularly, and firmly resists any pressure to date. After Dan's death, she was hospitalized, and her sister, Rachel Anderby, who works at an international art import-export firm, stepped in to care for the children. Rachel remains deeply involved in the daily life of Lili and her two daughters: seven-year-old Annabel, serious and composed beyond her years, and five-year-old Clare, imaginative and uninhibited.

Lili's general manager, Roberta King, assigns her to illustrate a vegetable encyclopedia for the Bloem Company, a major Dutch seed corporation, and commits her to a six-week Saturday gardening class taught by Edward Bloem, a professor from the Bloem family. Lili agrees and recruits Rachel to help with the kids during class. At home, Clare innocently states that Dan is dead so Lili can remarry, and Annabel breaks down, insisting her parents are still married. Lili comforts Annabel by promising she will always love Dan. Meanwhile, Rachel engineers a blind date with a British colleague named Charles, but the setup fails: Charles and Lili bond over their mutual unavailability and nothing more. At her sessions with grief therapist Dr. Ruth Graver, Lili insists she does not feel free and expresses anger at the social pressure to move on.

The first gardening class takes place at a botanical garden, where Edward leads a diverse group: Frances and Eloise, a couple who are both retired teachers; Gene, a gruff retired banker whose wife enrolled him; Mike, a laid-back young man who signed up on a whim; and Angela (Angie), a sharp young single mother who grew up in the projects of East L.A. and has never had access to green space. Clare blurts out that Lili's husband is dead, creating an awkward silence that Edward smoothly redirects.

Over the following weeks, the garden becomes a site of unexpected healing. Lili discovers that the physical work of digging calms her self-critical mind for the first time in years. She draws a garden plan for her backyard and unconsciously sketches Dan sitting on a bench. At home, she still clings to rituals of grief, rationing the scent from sealed bags of Dan's unwashed clothes that she preserved the night he died. After the second class, Lili invites the group to her house, and they transform her neglected yard into a thriving garden. That evening, Edward and Lili sit on the back stoop drinking wine. She opens up about Dan's death; he shares that he is divorced and misses his 12-year-old son in Amsterdam. He wipes a tear from her cheek and kisses her there, but a scream from the children interrupts them. When Lili returns, he is gone.

Two disruptions hit in rapid succession. Maggie, Dan's sister and Lili's closest friend, arrives from Italy because her husband, Berto, has been having an affair with a student. Then Roberta announces that Poplar Press is closing its creative department and outsourcing overseas, and Lili is laid off. Rachel takes Lili and Maggie out to distract them, and the evening ends in a bitter sidewalk argument. Lili lashes out about being pathetically grateful to Rachel, and Rachel fires back that Dan's death was a loss for everyone, not just Lili. Rachel storms off and refuses to take Lili's calls the next day.

Edward visits with an elaborate fairy house for the children and helps Lili reach Rachel by phone, confirming she is alive but still angry. Standing close in the kitchen, Edward tells Lili the curve of her neck is where he would most like to kiss her. She tells him to go ahead. The kiss escalates rapidly, and both recognize they will become lovers, but Clare's voice from outside interrupts them. After he leaves, Lili and Rachel reconcile by phone. Edward sends fragrant roses to Lili's office and takes her for milkshakes. He tells her he has wanted to know her since they met, and he can wait until she is ready. She admits she wants to be with him but also wants to run away.

That night, Lili finds Annabel crying over a homemade photo album in which every picture shows only fragments of Dan because Lili had always aimed the camera at the children. Annabel cannot remember her father's face. Lili realizes she removed Dan's photos from the house to protect herself, inadvertently robbing Annabel of her memories. They spend an hour going through hundreds of digital photos together, and Lili orders a printed book. Afterward, overwhelmed by guilt, she feels her attraction to Edward is a betrayal and emails him the next morning saying she is not ready.

The class continues to deepen bonds among its members. The group helps Gene build a surprise scented garden for his wife, Isabel, at his Beverly Hills estate. At the fourth class, Mike reveals he is a genius who attended MIT at 15, served in the military, and was severely injured in an explosion. He then guesses Angie's life story and tells her he thinks she is amazing but assumes she would never date someone like him. She says she would love to, and the class cheers. Meanwhile, Rachel meets Richard Byrnes, a lawyer, and falls in love, confessing to Lili that she feels scared and vulnerable. Lili reassures her that it is OK to fall in love. Lili lands a freelance contract at Rubber Ball Press, a children's book publisher. She calls her mother, Karen, and they have an unusually honest conversation in which Lili acknowledges they are both widows and asks them to try harder. Looking through old photos, Lili finally absorbs what Rachel said during their fight: Dan's death was a loss for everyone who loved him.

Lili invites Edward to a Friday dinner with her family. Karen makes cutting remarks, including a comment about Clare's body, but Clare calmly deflects by repeating Lili's lessons about being strong and healthy. Mid-meal, Berto arrives from Italy, desperate to see Maggie. She confronts him fiercely and slams the door, but when he begins singing their song outside, she cries and Lili lets him in.

During the fifth class, Gene collapses from a heart attack. Angie performs CPR and uses a defibrillator to revive him, while Lili freezes completely, paralyzed by flashbacks to Dan's death. Gene survives surgery, and the class rallies around his recovery. Lili has a nightmare in which Dan's accident replays with Edward and her children in the crash. Dr. Graver tells her that her real fear is not losing someone but losing her mind again, as she did after Dan's death, and points out that during Gene's crisis, Lili stayed standing and survived without breaking down. Lili visits Dan's parents, where his mother, April, tells her that pursuing a new direction is not a betrayal; it is simply letting Dan stay as he was while Lili moves forward.

At the sixth and final class, the garden produces an abundant harvest. Lili finds Edward alone in the tomato patch and kisses him, making clear she wants him. Clare discovers them and announces it to everyone. The group harvests vegetables, donates surplus to a community kitchen, and gathers at Frances and Eloise's home for a celebration dinner. Edward announces plans for a community garden and asks Lili to illustrate a book about the course. Back at Lili's house, the children reveal a surprise: a wooden bench under the tree in the garden, inscribed "to the bestest mommy in the world, for sitting on" (346). Lili sits on the bench with her daughters and Rachel piled on top of her, content and at peace. She decides to stay seated and enjoy the moment before getting up to handle whatever comes next.