In your pictures, your sim is a teenager / high school student.
I play as a teenager university student. I am able to get my plants to mature and produce a flower harvest. Watering the plants / Tend is not an option, but I have found that the plants thrive when you build skills / relationships in the fairy ring of the OOE garden. The plants bloom at 5:00AM and are available for harvest. But all total, there are only four plants and they don't share one common season, so at most, I'm only able to harvest three plants in the spring. Tend Garden has never been an option even though I'm at 10 gardening. and I never get credit for harvesting the three flowers, and I don't get credit for taking a sample of them either.
Still, I have been able to stay in the order and advance to Senior member even without Tending Garden or Helping another student with course work.
