Amy Matteucci was just 8 years old when she planted her first seeds.

“I was a Camp Fire girl, and we earned a badge for gardening. I started a black-eyed pea plant, and it just went bananas,” Amy, an engineering program lead at Sandia, said.

Amy still remembers the sense of accomplishment she felt watching that plant grow, from seed to sprout to flower and finally harvest.

“I was so proud of that first crop. I pulled the peas off the plant, threw them into this giant silver bowl, and later, after we prepared them and I had my first bite, I remember thinking they were the best black-eyed peas I had ever tasted because they were mine,” Amy said. “And from then on, I was hooked.”

Deep roots

The gardening bug ran deep in Amy’s family. Growing up in Texas, her grandparents were prolific gardeners, growing okra, corn, peppers and as she called them, her grandmother’s “crazy tomatoes.” Amy’s mother took to flowers, known for her annuals and roses. And her brother, who refused to eat veggies, would grow “the most amazing vegetable gardens.”

As Amy grew older, she continued to garden, taking after her mom, growing flowers wherever she could.

“Even in college while living in these tiny apartments, I would have pots of flowers,” she said. “And in almost every home I’ve ever lived in, I’ve made it a priority to have plenty of flower beds.”

But gardening isn’t just about growing something beautiful. For Amy, it’s also a form of therapy.

“Starting something from nothing, take a seed, some dirt, add a little water and watch it grow. It’s a spiritual experience, a form of therapy, to see that direct benefit of effort,” she said. “It’s a powerful confidence builder.”

Dahlias and potatoes

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Amy got into the “dahlia side of Instagram.” Already a feracious plantswoman, she suddenly found herself fixated on the tuberous perennials, specifically the Ball Dahlia.

“I noticed this flower in my feed. It had this uniquely decorative shape, the petals arranged in perfect folds. I was obsessed,” Amy said. “Dahlias are grown underground, like a potato, and in some ways, they’re robust the same way a potato is. When you touch them, they’re very firm. You can squeeze them and they’ll keep their shape. They’re really strong flowers.”

Unexpected changes

Around this same time, Amy’s life took an unexpected turn.

In 2022, she learned that her mom was sick. She had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and was in the hospital with a fever.

“My mom told me not to worry, but as soon as I got off the phone, I threw some clothes in a bag, headed to the airport and asked for the quickest flight home,” she said. “My parents didn’t know I was coming, and shortly after I landed, my dad called to tell me they were putting mom on a ventilator. I told him I was on my way to the hospital from the airport — and he just broke down.”

Amy spent eight weeks in Texas caring for her mom. They would sit together and talk about life, their past and Amy’s future.

“Watching her in those final days was surreal because in so many ways, I thought my mom was too tough to die. I think like a lot of kids. We think our parents are immortal, but she wasn’t; none of us are,” she said.

The next chapter

As Amy grappled with what it meant to lose her mother, she also began to understand she was entering a new phase of life: stepping into the role as matriarch for her family while saying goodbye to her own.

“For so long I was just focused on raising my daughter and work,” she said. “There wasn’t much time to do anything that was just for me.”

But now with her daughter graduated from college and retirement on the horizon, Amy pondered what she wanted from this next chapter. Turns out she’d already found what she was looking for.

“When I came back to New Mexico after my mom passed, I decided I was going to start growing dahlias,” Amy said.

She started at home in 2023, planting about 150 tubers in her yard. Unlike sunflowers or marigolds, which are grown from seeds, the preferred way to plant dahlias is by planting tubers, which are the underground storage organ of the plant.

Growing opportunities

Her home garden flourished as did her network within the dahlia community, both on social media and, more formally, through the American Dahlia Society. Amy learned more about farmers who were growing larger quantities and of potential business opportunities within these circles.

“I realized that this could be a viable business to supplement my eventual retirement,” Amy said. “When my mom passed, she left my brother and I some money that she had inherited from her father — literal seed money that they had both worked so hard to save and put aside.”

Empowered by what her mother left her, both physically and in spirit, Amy was able to lease an eighth of an acre from the Rio Grande Community Farm in 2024.

“It’s been a big learning curve, planting on a farm,” she said. “Growing at home gives you a pretty controlled environment, but it’s totally different on a farm. The enormity of growing on a field is a challenge on its own, and then you have the environmental logistics. It’s a lot of trial by fire.”

On the farm, she planted 10 times as many tubers as she had the previous year at home. That first year was hard, but Amy said every time she encountered a hurdle — something going wrong or not working the way she had hoped — she imagined a field full of blooming dahlias. That imaginary field kept her going.

“In August, I started pulling back the shade cloth, and I could finally see everything. It wasn’t in full bloom yet, but there was the whole field, the live plants, and I had this moment of awe, like this is what I had been picturing,” she said. “A few weeks later, I was standing back in the field, dahlias blooming around me, and I was just overcome with feelings. I was so proud of myself, and I felt my mom’s presence there with me. It was really beautiful.”

“Losing my mom, growing dahlias, being in the farm — these experiences have given me a deeper connection to the world around me, the soil, the seasons, the weather. I can’t control that one day I’m going to die, and I can’t control that I’ll lose my flowers after the first frost, but I can control how I spend the seasons I have and how I enjoy the flowers in bloom.”