I made The Garden with my good friend, Henry Wiedemer (Henry Thrill, havefun) in the two weeks before we both left for college. Both of our schools started a few weeks after the rest of our high school friends, so we were left with pretty much nothing to do. So, we decided to make an EP.

Writing the first song, “party for no one,” was what made me think of the idea to make an EP in the few weeks we had left at home. I wrote it after my last friend had left for school. It had been goodbye after goodbye, after a summer filled with friends and fun—especially heightened because it was the summer after the COVID-19 pandemic and it was finally safe for us to all be together. I was really sad and lonely that first night without my friends, so I wrote, “I would throw a party, but they’re all gone, we’re moving on, so it’s a party for no one.”  

The second song, “the box,” is about a breakup sparked by going to college. It’s about taking all of the tangible things your ex gave you, putting it in a box, and shoving it away. For me, it was both literal and figurative. Inspired by Gilmore Girls where Rory puts all of the things from her first breakup in a box and hides it (thus the first line of the song, “I just pulled a Gilmore Girls”), I literally got home from my breakup and put everything my ex gave me into a box. Of course, I tried to shove all of my feelings into a box in my head and put it away in the deepest part of my mind, too.

The third song, “all we have,” is about a summer situationship where all the lines are blurry. It’s about how all the questions and insecurities about the relationship consume you, but at the same time you just can’t stop wanting to be with that person.

I wrote the fourth song, “easy,” several years prior to the rest of The Garden. For the longest time, it was my favorite song I had written because of how happy it was. I wrote that song about the summer before my sophomore year of high school, where I started feeling grown up for the first time. I finally felt like I had an identity, and like I ruled the world with my best friends.

The fifth song, “the end,” is probably still one of my favorite songs I’ve written. I wrote it during one of the last weeks of my senior year of high school. I had just dropped my mom off at the airport, which was the first time I had ever done that by myself. It was terrifying. It was the first moment where I realized everything was going to change, and keep changing. The lyrics from the bridge of “the end” are also where I found the inspiration for the title of the EP.

The last song on the project, “the ending - reprise,” I wrote on the spot with Henry in the studio. We knew we needed a final song to wrap up all the ideas in the EP. To me, the song is this triumphant feeling that despite all the turmoil we were experiencing at that moment in our lives, we were ready for everything to change.