Texas-Heilongjiang Garden Project

Written by Eric Li from Texas, USA

The first time Grandma disabled Mom’s petunia sprinkler system, I thought it was a betrayal of American values. Those pink flowers were Dad’s Mother's Day gift that had survived three Texas droughts. I watched from my bedroom window as Grandma’s shadow fell across the flowerbed. Her rough hands, still cracked from cold Heilongjiang (the most northern province in China) winters even after five years in Texas, twisted the water valve shut with a firmness that said “no arguing.”

“Wasted land,” she muttered in Chinese, rubbing clay soil between her fingers like she was testing flour. The petunias seemed to tremble, like they knew their time was up.

That weekend, Grandma’s suitcase burst open in our garage like a treasure chest. Inside were seed packets wrapped in a Chinese newspaper, strings of dried red peppers hanging like decorations, and the infamous jar of fermented soybean paste that would soon make our backyard smell like a Chinese village. Next door, our neighbor’s golden retriever Rex, barked at the strange smells drifting over the fence.

“Baby bok choy needs more shade,” Grandma declared that first evening as she made soda-can collars around the young plants. “In Harbin (the capital city of Heilongjiang Province), we plant after the last frost, but here...” she trailed off, squinting at the Texas sun like it had personally offended her.

I made my protest at dinner. “There's an H-E-B grocery store five minutes drive away,” I said, holding up an ad displayed on my phone. “See? Napa cabbage is only $1.29 per pound. Why waste time growing what’s so cheap?”

Grandma didn’t look up from chopping garlic. “Store vegetables don’t know your hands.”

In summer, our backyard had become a contested territory between American lawn culture and Chinese agricultural pragmatism. Grandma’s innovations multiplied weekly: a watering system made from my old tennis shirt sleeves and punctured Gatorade bottles; trellises from broken blinds; even a shade structure using my sister’s torn trampoline net. Every Friday morning, she’d walk the neighborhood, returning with a cart full of “plant gold,” for example, broken picture frames became garden markers, and an old ceiling fan turned into a pest deterrent.

Kids around us called it “Chinese Grandma’s Junk Garden,” but I noticed their moms started coming to our fence with empty bowls and hopeful smiles. Our Hispanic neighbor across the street traded homemade tamales for dandelion greens she believed helped her husband’s diabetes symptoms. My Korean friend’s grandma exchanged her kimchi recipe for our Chinese chives. Most importantly, excess chives would be used to make my favorite dumplings every Sunday morning. 

Then came the drought. Though the city restricted water, and lawns turned brown, Grandma’s garden thrived. She’d wake me at 6:30 AM to “steal water”: catching shower water in buckets, collecting AC condensation. Her notebook, her own little personal almanac, was filled with moon phases and diagrams showing how she arranged plants to create shade.

“You think this is just dirt?” she asked one morning as I grudgingly spread used coffee grounds around sweet potato leaves. She pressed my hand into the soil. “Earth is our roots and our history. My hands are here. Your future children’s hands will be here as well.”

When severe storm warnings became frequent in August/September, though others hid in shelters, Grandma pulled me outside. “Help tie down the tomatoes!” We used everything we could find: old jump ropes, Dad’s discarded ties, even torn-up bedsheets when we ran out of string. As sirens wailed, she sang “The Commune Members Are All Sunflowers,” her voice cracking, which made me think of the time when she'd sing me to sleep as a child.

After the storm, our street was littered with garbage, leaving no trace of our once peaceful street. The neighbors' prized magnolia tree crushed their SUV. But Grandma’s Garden stood strong: bruised but unbroken. Her winter melons swayed like victorious boxers.

Later that night, I found her weather notebook open on the patio. In her mix of Chinese and broken English, she'd written: “Harbin in 1968: the early snow killed soybeans” and “Houston in 2021 - same pattern??” Next to a pressed cotton leaf handwriting picture: “WeChat said it would rain when cotton leaves curled; should I test with Texas plants?”

Something changed in me then. I started waking early to check soil moisture with Mom’s meat thermometer. Grandma pretended not to notice until she saw me graphing pH levels. Without a word, she left a chrysanthemum tea by my calculator.

That winter, we began our big experiment, named the Texas-Heilongjiang Hybrid Project. Using seeds from China and local plants, we tried creating vegetables that could handle both cold and heat. The backyard and garage became our lab, guided by both Grandma’s moon charts and my USDA climate printouts. We turned an old fridge into a germination chamber, its shelves lined with egg cartons of our experiments.

The February freeze nearly destroyed everything. At 2:47 AM, Grandma’s icy hand shook me awake. “26 degrees,” she whispered. By phone light, we wrapped plants in every fabric we could find from home: my younger sister’s childhood blankets, wool scarves, even Dad’s old sweatshirts. At dawn, the snow peas hung like broken wires.

But then Grandma gasped. Sheltered by the house, three bok choy plants stood unharmed under their quilt armor. As we knelt, she pressed an ice chip into my palm. “Same as the 1969 Harbin famine winter.” The meltwater traced my new calluses, proof of our shared work.

It was then that I began to understand what Grandma had always known: that cultivating the earth was more than survival. It was character, tradition, and duty. Like in Confucius’s teachings, where harmony with nature and respect for one’s elders shape moral life, our garden became a reflection of those values: diligence, frugality, and reverence for the wisdom passed down through generations. Through his teachings, he also instilled in me a respect for the Earth and the importance of preserving that connection for future generations. 

That spring, something amazing happened. Our hybrid greens flourished while store-bought plants wilted. Neighbors came with notebooks to learn Grandma's secret. Her “Dragon-Tex Long Beans” won first prize at our local Chinese church gardening contest for the elderly, growing eight feet tall with little water.

Now, when I check the garden at dawn, I sometimes hum Grandma’s work songs. We grow food, but also something more precious: a living language between worlds. When I see my Korean friend taking notes on how Grandma trains bitter melon vines, or neighbors saving coffee grounds for our compost, I know this scrappy garden has become something unexpected: a place of resilience in changing times. This garden gave us the ability to spread a sense of care throughout the community, and the garden reminded us what it meant to be human.

As for those petunias? They only live on in one photo on Mom’s phone, and it’s a relic from when we thought beauty had to be decorative. Now beauty looks different: snow pea vines climbing a broken basketball hoop, moonlight silvering rows of napa cabbage like messages across generations.

The land remembers what we teach it. If we listen, it tells stories of Heilongjiang winters and Texas heat, of hunger and plenty, and life finding ways to survive. 

All we have to do is dig.