The Garden of Unfinished Things

The Garden of Unfinished Things Plot Summary Evan is a typical occupational therapy graduate student — organized on the outside, unraveling on the inside. He color-codes his notes, rewrites assignments late into the night, and quietly wonders if everyone else understands things faster than he does. He uses AI to polish his papers “just in case,” tells himself he’ll feel confident next semester, and carries a low, constant fear of being found out. One evening after a long day of class, lab check-offs, and comparing himself to classmates who seem more articulate, Evan dreams of a garden hidden behind his university’s clinic building. It is not a neat garden. It is filled with half-grown plants, crooked trellises, seed packets left open, and labels that read: “Draft #3” “Still Learning” “Imperfect Lab Performance” “Questions I Didn’t Ask” “Fieldwork Anxiety” “Good Enough” Some plants are blooming unevenly. Some are tangled. Some haven’t sprouted yet at all. At first, Evan feels uneasy. He wants to fix it. Prune it. Organize it. Make it look like the gardens he imagines his classmates must have. But an older groundskeeper appears — not as a lecturer, but as a quiet presence — and explains that this is where all becoming happens. Growth here is slow. Nonlinear. Often invisible before it is visible. Evan begins to notice that every student has a plot in the garden. No one’s is finished. No one’s is perfect. Some plants look strong but have fragile roots. Some look small but are deeply anchored. Over time, Evan realizes the garden is not a place of failure — it is a place of process. The story follows him through moments of overwhelm, perfectionism, comparison, and self-doubt, as he learns that unfinished does not mean inadequate. It means growing. The book closes with Evan returning to the garden before graduation. It still isn’t complete. It never will be. But he no longer mistakes that for a problem. Because the garden was never meant to be finished. It was meant to be tended.