From Killing Every Plant I Owned to Building a Rooftop Garden: The Story Behind ZeroToGardener

Who I Am

Hi, I’m Ali Hasan — a marketing coordinator by day, and by night (and every weekend), the person my neighbors now call “the plant guy of Maple Street.” I live in a small two-bedroom apartment with exactly one south-facing window and a balcony that’s barely big enough to turn around in. If you’d told me five years ago that I’d have over 60 plants thriving in this tiny space, I would have laughed — and then probably killed the plant I was holding while laughing.

I’m not a horticulturist. I don’t have a degree in botany. I’m just someone who spent years failing at keeping plants alive, got tired of failing, and figured out how to stop.

How I Got Into This

It started in 2019, almost by accident. A coworker gave me a pothos cutting in a jam jar as a “get well soon” gift after I’d been out sick for a week. I felt guilty watching it sit on my desk, so I decided to actually try to keep it alive. Within three weeks, it was yellow, mushy, and very obviously dead. I’d overwatered it — a mistake I would go on to repeat with at least a dozen more plants over the next year.

I didn’t give up, mostly out of stubbornness. I started reading, testing, killing more plants, and slowly — very slowly — figuring out what I was doing wrong. By 2021 I had my first plant that actually survived a full year: a snake plant I’d nearly neglected to death, which turned out to be exactly what it needed. That was the turning point. I stopped trying to baby my plants and started learning what they actually wanted, which was usually a lot less attention than I assumed.

Today, my apartment and balcony hold everything from ZZ plants and pothos to a small collection of succulents, a few hardy perennials in containers, and even a couple of herbs I somehow manage to keep alive long enough to cook with.

What I Actually Know

I want to be specific here, because “I know a lot about plants” doesn’t mean much on its own. What I actually have hands-on experience with:

• Keeping plants alive in low-light apartments with little to no direct sun
• Choosing plants that survive irregular watering — because my schedule is genuinely unpredictable
• Container and balcony gardening in limited space, including what actually fits and thrives in small pots
• Diagnosing common problems by sight: yellowing leaves, root rot, leggy growth, pest infestations
• Building simple, low-effort routines instead of complicated care schedules I know I won’t stick to
• Choosing pet-safe plants, since I have a cat who treats every leaf as a personal challenge

I’ve learned most of this the hard way — through trial, error, and a lot of dead plants — along with reading extensively, joining local gardening groups, and asking questions in plant forums until I actually understood the “why” behind the advice, not just the “what.”

I’ll also say clearly what I don’t know: I have no experience with large-scale outdoor gardens, commercial growing, or climates very different from my own. My expertise is specifically in small-space, low-maintenance, beginner-friendly gardening — and that’s exactly what I write about.

The Gap I Kept Running Into

When I was starting out, I spent hours searching for help online, and most of what I found fell into one of two categories. Either it was written by lifelong gardening experts who assumed I already understood plant biology, soil composition, and half a dozen terms I’d never heard of — or it was generic advice copied from one site to another, offering vague tips like “water regularly” without ever explaining what that actually means for a specific plant, in a specific space, for a specific type of person.

Nobody was writing for someone like me: a busy, forgetful, complete beginner who didn’t want a hobby that required a horticulture degree — just a way to have some greenery in my home without it becoming a source of guilt every time I looked at it. The troubleshooting guides I found were the worst offenders — they’d list ten possible causes for yellow leaves without ever helping me figure out which one applied to my actual plant, in my actual home.

My Plan to Fix That

So that’s what I set out to build here. Every guide on this site is based on something I’ve actually grown, killed, revived, or successfully kept alive myself — not repackaged information from other websites. I test care routines before I recommend them. When something doesn’t work, I write about that too, because knowing what fails is often more useful than knowing what’s supposed to work in theory.

I also try to write the way I wish someone had explained things to me at the start — assuming zero prior knowledge, skipping the jargon, and always tying advice back to real situations: low light, small spaces, inconsistent schedules, pets, and forgetfulness. If a plant needs something complicated to survive, I’ll tell you that upfront instead of setting you up to fail.

What You’ll Find on This Site

ZeroToGardener is built for complete beginners — especially people in apartments, small homes, or anywhere without a big yard, who want to grow something without it taking over their life. The site is organized around a few core areas:

• Low-maintenance plant guides — care instructions for the plants that are hardest to kill, indoors and out
• Troubleshooting help — figuring out exactly what’s wrong with a struggling plant and how to fix it
• Plant comparisons — straightforward answers to “which one is actually easier to keep alive”
• Lifestyle-based recommendations — plants suited to low light, frequent travel, pets, or a genuinely forgetful watering schedule

I’m aiming to publish at least one in-depth guide a week, and every post includes photos from my own plants and space — not stock images.

Let’s Grow Something Together

If you’ve ever felt like you have a “black thumb,” I promise you don’t — you probably just haven’t found the right plant, or the right information, yet. That was exactly my story for years.

If you’re thinking about bringing your first plant home, a good place to start is my guide, “Zero to Green: Your First 30 Days With a New Plant.” And if you’re stuck on something specific, drop a comment — I read and respond to every one, because I remember exactly what it felt like to have no idea why my plant was dying and nowhere reliable to ask.

Let’s stop killing plants together.