A 39-year-old woman shared photos after two years of rooftop gardening, stunning everyone
Dear readers, have you seen the movie "Woman at Forty"? It's about how professional women balance family and career.
Forty seems to be a hurdle, and many people cross it, living for family, for work, for children, but never for themselves.
However, there is a former commercial real estate dealmaker who, approaching forty, energetically built a rooftop garden that quickly stunned everyone on social media!
When she poured her energy into her own life, she found that both family and children naturally fell into place. This "gardening influencer" is named "Gouzi Zhu."
Shining Friends
A Little Love
Fiona Fung
00:00/01:47
{ Peony Girl Vol.808 }
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An energetic woman does gardening
If you meet "flower-crazy" Gouzi Zhu, she will definitely introduce these summer flowers to you one by one:
"This purple one is blazing star (Liatris), the white one is panicle hydrangea, cool like ice cream, a super good baby~
What you see now is the king of summer, Gloriosa lily. This Gloriosa is a new variety this year called 'Flash Pattern,' green when it first opens, then turning increasingly yellow, with red stripes in the middle, and in the later stages the whole plant turns red.
Now the camera sweeps to petunia. Petunia is a model worker,
blooming from spring all the way to November..."
They are not afraid of the plum rain, not afraid of the strong sun, and still bloom especially vigorously. Gouzi Zhu goes through their characteristics, patterns, and temperaments one by one, as if introducing a group of close friends. This is her weekly garden livestream sharing time.
Flower farmer Gouzi Zhu wears a sun-shading straw hat,
a white T-shirt and blue pants, with a tool apron tied on,
three square pockets stuffed full,
all holding her handy tools.
The apron is gray, with no pastoral floral print on it
“Actually, I look very ordinary." Gouzi Zhu says. Yet such an ordinary-looking flower farmer, if she doesn't share her garden one day, an entire fan club won't stand for it.
Just two years ago, Gouzi Zhu was still a commercial real estate dealmaker who knew nothing about gardening. A 180° turn not only didn't throw out her back, but also made her life more and more delightful.
How did she come up with creating a garden? After she became famous, everyone was asking Gouzi Zhu this question.
Becauseher daughter is named Nuomi (Sticky Rice), and the garden is also called Nuomi Garden，
Naturally, the headline the media loves to use most is:
"She built a dream garden for her daughter."
"That's not it!" Unexpectedly, when asked to confirm, Gouzi Zhu directly threw out a denial.
She doesn't want to become someone who gives up her own value and devotes herself entirely to her children.
“The best education is leading by example,
first shaping yourself into a better person,
the child will see your changes, and she will also get better and better.”
What was Gouzi Zhu like before? Very driven. How driven?
Eight months pregnant, relying on loose clothing, she actually fooled her business partners' eyes, drove alone on the highway for several hundred kilometers, from Nanjing to Anhui, "I don't want to be taken care of just because I'm pregnant."
Now, shewhen a multimillionaire visits and sinks into her sofa, she still hoes weeds when it's time to hoe, waters when it's time to water, tending this rooftop of flowers and plants. Let people space out, no pleasantries exchanged, both sides enjoy the ease.
Until the small night lights on the terrace light up one by one.
She is still very driven, but what she's driven about isn't her career. What wakes her up every morning isn't an alarm clock, but a terrace full of flowers and plants.
“Like she's taken an aphrodisiac." Past six o'clock, without washing her face or brushing her teeth, throwing off the covers and slipping into slippers, Gouzi Zhu rushes onto the terrace. Have the buds opened? Are the figs ripe? Can they be picked and eaten?
After greeting each of her favorites one by one, she prunes and trims, waters and fertilizes.
Every day is lived like a holiday.
It all started in 2016.That year, Gouzi Zhu and her family moved into a duplex that included a 100 sq m terrace. At the time, the terrace was still empty, "If only this were a garden"~
As the head of a commercial real estate company,
this thought suddenly flashed into Gouzi Zhu's head,
and then, it could never be shaken off.
So what kind of garden should she make?
Every garden is unrepeatable, "it's related to every road you've walked and every river you've crossed."She worked as a media person, then started her own commercial real estate company as boss, acting decisively and energetically, and also loves reading magazines like Modern Weekly, and took photography classes to learn about color coordination.
Reaching forty, yet still full of power.
She loves the loyalty of dogs and the cheerfulness of pigs,
It is this free-spirited and straightforward Gouzi Zhu
who could create this Nuomi Garden that is never idle in any season.
No lace, no expensive imported porcelain, she doesn't want to pile up a garden with money. Gouzi Zhu likes to hunt for interesting things to decorate her garden.
Just like herself, she doesn't want to prove herself with LV and Hermes bags. A broom placed in the right spot can also be a scenery. "Why do you have a clothesline at home? How ugly!" She hangs up sheets and Nuomi's beautiful clothes.
Making unbeautiful things beautiful,
that is truly having the ability to create beauty.
Most flowers bloom in spring, so gardens easily become a sorry sight by autumn and winter. However,her garden has something to see in all four seasons, never closing its doors to visitors.
She likes vibrant leaves, believing they are no less impressive than fresh flowers; she also built a glass greenhouse to cope with Nanjing's damp cold winters. The objects in the courtyard also change with the seasons.
In cold seasons, she puts up a large umbrella carried back from Chiang Mai,
yellow and bright~
In summer, you need to cool down a bit,
so she switches to a blue oil-paper umbrella.
The entire terrace is brought into a quiet and cool atmosphere.
She is a bit unconventional. "I insist on shrubs," while Chinese tradition plants willows, she goes the opposite way.
Because she greatly loves the temperament of pines and cypresses among flower clusters of varying heights.
Pine and cypress lollipops also have a kind of uncle-like cuteness~
She has an intense personality and also makes some combinations that go beyond the "safe range."
For example, a yellow-and-black flower border combining tulips and bulbs. In her view, the two colors complete each other, and unlike red-and-yellow combinations used carelessly, which look like scrambled eggs with tomatoes.
Seemingly risky, yet unexpectedly beautiful.
Seemingly bold, yet hiding care behind it.
The cutest touch of yellow,
of course, comes from little Nuomi.
Her hands are covered with scratches from roses, dirt in her fingernails that never washes off, so she simply cuts them round and short. Facing foreign gardening books and programs, she frantically catches up on learning, and has also killed quite a few flowers.
Gouzi Zhu spent two years
walking the path others take seven or eight years to walk.
Just to create thisgarden's framework。
"Your garden is definitely more than 100 sq m." said a gardening friend whose home is four or five hundred sq m, yet still feels she doesn't have many flowers.
Gouzi Zhu, a bit mysterious and a bit smug, says, this is my magic.A bonsai master makes a dojo inside a snail shell, and the entire garden is Gouzi Zhu's dojo. Screens, stairs, tables, temporary flower walls, all are used by Gouzi Zhu to work her magic.
The terrace, originally four empty walls and a bare floor, is divided into dozens of spaces, with different facades transforming into different scenes like a kaleidoscope:
The maples change color differently through the four seasons,
a dozen or so Japanese maples, layered one upon another, piling up Zen flavor...
Is it full? Not full either, the terrace only uses fifty percent.
Without blank space, it isn't beautiful, and that blank space carries the greatest meaning of this garden in Gouzi Zhu's mind: people.
People are the eternal protagonists of Nuomi Garden.
Little friends who come to visit Nuomi Garden
Nuomi's grandfather is nearly eighty years old, has published more than two hundred books in his lifetime, and is still writing a "Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese-English Xiehouyu."
After working at his desk for over ten hours, when tired, he hangs a camera around his neck and goes for a walk in the garden, taking photos.
At eighty, he's still amazed like a child,
"What's the English name of this flower?"
The one-meter vegetable garden is grandma's domain. Saying goodbye to the vegetable market, whatever she wants to eat, she pulls it from the soil, washes it, and puts it in the pot, a down-to-earth happiness.
In summer,
there are also watermelons with thin rinds and sweet flesh~
Nuomi's maternal grandfather is a tech expert, barn doors, trellis frames, greenhouse frames, fences, wall grids, insect houses,
small plumbing and electrical projects, hammering and tinkering to make them beautiful.
The next-door neighbor is also a gardening friend, and said to Nuomi's grandfather, your daughter is Gouzi Zhu?!
After retirement, he found life's pleasures in the garden,
and Gouzi Zhu also became the pride of him and grandma.
Everyone finds their own joy in the garden.
Nuomi's dad has taken charge of
everything related to being a "foodie."
Gathering around the hot pot to cook meatballs and greens,
turning lamb skewers over bright charcoal,
Since having the garden, old friends have also found a place to gather.
As for Nuomi, the little mistress of "Nuomi Garden"?
Gouzi Zhu says with a smile that she is "a girl who grew up on the rooftop." In weekend gardening classes, she plays, frolics, and laughs.
Nuomi followed Gouzi Zhu and learned to, for strawberries:
hand-pollinate, take cuttings, sow seeds, catch bugs.
When there's no gardening class, she plays hide-and-seek among the flowers, Boston ivy, and screens.
At the highest point of the terrace,
she often climbs up to look into the distance,
Just growing up free and unrestrained like that.
A wild child who grew up on a rooftop, yet got into Nanjing Foreign Language School Elementary, where fewer than two hundred out of ten thousand applicants are admitted.
Dogzi Zhu's answer is: play! Besides playing all over the rooftop, Dogzi Zhu also takes Nuomi (Sticky Rice) around the world to experience things.
They don't want her to be great, they just want her to be happy,
This is all they expect for Nuomi.
Sometimes, the adorable Nuomi is even more popular than "Nuomi Garden."But the "wild child" has no idea at all, and just keeps running wild in the garden.
The teacher organized classmates to visit Nuomi Garden. A child from a family in finance went home after playing and told her mom, "Nuomi is so rich, our family isn't as rich as Nuomi's."
In a child's world,
There is no money, no status,
Someone who holds a big garden and abundant happiness,
Is the "richest" in their hearts.
Just like Dogzi Zhu. Right now, she has handed most of her former company over to her brother to manage. Having given up more wealth, she feels she has come closer to the "financial freedom" everyone craves.
When she was young, she left Yangzhou, also driven by a determination, feeling she had to prove herself to the people in the big city. Now, she no longer wants to use luxury goods to please others' eyes.
Only when desires are lowered can one find true freedom wrapped in money.Now, she only wants to please herself, and please those who love her and those she loves.
The garden has brought a new kind of human relationship. She loves the pure interaction with flower friends, free of interests. Every person is a book she has never read before, and she reads each one carefully.
"How do you grow this flower?" Many flower friends throw all kinds of questions at her, and she answers them one by one. For those who want seedlings, she sends them for free, even covering the shipping.
Because when Dogzi Zhu was a newcomer, she also received many seedlings sent by veteran flower friends, and she hopes to continue the tradition.
When she receives local specialty seedlings and New Year goods sent by flower friends,
She feels a flowing and abundant happiness.
She says, "After a flower has bloomed passionately, its body will be depleted, and it needs to recharge. Maybe during this time, it isn't beautiful, just like a woman who has just given birth, but she is nurturing energy. Withering has its own beauty, and you must learn to appreciate it.”
Plants live and die,
Flowers come and leave the branches.
She begins to understand more deeply the relationship between people and the solar terms and phenology.
Like a flower that has bloomed vibrantly until nearly forty, the still-burning Dogzi Zhu has found her new life positioning -- "Vitality Woman”。
This term is her own invention. Vitality doesn't only belong to young girls full of collagen. In the public eye, a middle-aged woman who is only forty brings to mind someone who exhausts herself for family and work, fights fat, applies every expensive skincare product to her face, yet still cannot recover her youth.
Dogzi Zhu wants to set the record straight for "Vitality Women" like herself, "We don't complain about life, we don't check our husband's phone, we don't build our happiness and joy on others.
We can dig the source of happiness out of ourselves,
We have ideals, we love ourselves very much, and we are full of energy.”
Speaking of the future, Dogzi Zhu is still like a young person in her early twenties.
Now she has transformed from a career woman into a "gardening internet celebrity," and in the future, photographer, painter, film director... She says, let your imagination fly for a while.
The life of a Vitality Woman also holds many possibilities.
How about it?
After reading about Dogzi Zhu's gardening life,
Are you, like Shaoyao (Peony),
Wanting to fly over right away to visit her garden?
I think it must be a place
Full of vitality, a gas station of energy~
END