There’s a secret garden in my backyard. You can’t see it from the street, from any of the windows in my home, or from anywhere else in the perennial gardens in the yard unless you follow the path that takes you along the neighbor’s fence, behind my potting room at the back of the garage.

The secret garden has a long, 20+ foot row of zinnias along its path. The zinnia bed was added to the garden two years ago after seeing all of the beautiful zinnias at the Community Gardens in Nashua’s Greeley Park. I still visit there to get inspired and to visit Sophie who has the most beautiful zinnia garden you’ll ever see.

This year, I planted the zinnia seeds late in June, so they just started to put on a beautiful show as we flipped the calendar to September. There are zinnias of every color, shape, and size that you can imagine.

There is one that you’d never expect to see, let alone imagine. It stands taller than all the others. It’s nearly 55″ tall.

Its blossom measures nearly 3″ across.It’s a Schizo-Zinnia.

This flower has two distinct personalities. It didn’t know if it wanted to be hot-pink or white with speckles. So it’s both.

It looks like someone took two completely different flowers, cut them in half, and stitched them carefully down the middle to become one interesting bloom.

As a gardener, I’m in awe of every flower in the garden. From April to October, I run out early each morning to see what Mother Nature has delivered since the day before.

Over the past 2 weeks, the morning garden walks include a turn along the path to inspect the zinnias. Usually a blur of color and textures, I’ve walked by and have been glad to see that they are finally blooming and adding every color of the rainbow where you’d least expect it at the back of my yard.

Mother Nature is incredible. She surprised me by making this special flower stand tall and be noticed.

She made me stop.   And look.    And wonder.

This flower will stay in the garden until it’s ready to be dead-headed in mid-September.

Then the seeds will be saved to plant a surprise for next summer……in the now, not so secret garden.