From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden
Amy Stewart had a simple dream. She yearned for a garden filled with colorful jumbles of vegetables and flowers. After she and her husband finished graduate school, they pulled up their Texas roots and headed west to Santa Cruz, California. With little money in their pockets, they rented a modest seaside bungalow with a small backyard. It wasn't much--a twelve-hundred-square-foot patch of land with a couple of fruit trees, and a lot of dirt. A good place to start.
From the Ground Up is Stewart's quirky, humorous chronicle of the blossoms and weeds in her first garden and the lessons she's learned the hard way. From planting seeds her great-grandmother sends to battling snails, gophers, and aphids, Stewart takes us on a tour of four seasons in her coastal garden. Confessing her sins and delighting in small triumphs, she dishes the dirt for both the novice and the experienced gardener. Along the way, she brings her quintessential California beach town to life, complete with harbor seals, monarch butterfly migrations, and an old-fashioned seaside amusement park just down the street.
Each chapter includes helpful tips alongside the engaging story of a young woman's determination to create a garden in which the plants struggle to live up to the gardener's vision. Read an excerpt here.
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Reviews
"A rich feast of a book that celebrates the extraordinarily satisfying joys of making and keeping a garden" -Kirkus Reviews
Washington Post
"...perfect for spring."
Santa Cruz Metro
Thursday, February 22, 2001
In her first book, From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden, author Amy Stewart describes with humorous flair the creation, in a small Santa Cruz backyard, of a garden that at times acts like both wise teacher and unruly child. Stewart is eager to grow things in her new home--she and her husband moved to California after completing graduate school in their native Texas--and her book is a witty, instructive memoir of her encounters with the pleasures and pitfalls of starting a new garden from scratch. It is also an insightful portrait of Santa Cruz.
Barnes & Noble-Discover Great New Writers Selection
Amy Stewart has written a delightful, heartfelt gem of a memoir. [Read the entire review]
San Jose Mercury News
Friday, January 12, 2001
"In From the Ground Up, [Amy] Stewart shares the highs and lows of making things grow and also brings her Santa Cruz community to life."
Garden Design
(Dec-Jan Issue)
"An amusing tale..."
Carl Klaus
(author of My Vegetable Love, Weathering Winter, and Taking Retirement)
"A treasure trove of delightful stories, filled with wit, wisdom, and know-how for all gardeners-a rare horticultural treat."
Barbara Damrosch
(author of The Garden Primer and Theme Gardens)
"An adventure story, charmingly told, in which a young woman is bitten by the gardening bug, tills her plot for the sheer joy of it, and emerges with her own personal gardening style."
Book List
"...a first book filled with promise..."
San Diego Union Tribune
May 6, 2001
Every gardener has a first garden, and like most beginners, they experience a heady mix of highs -- the roses bloom -- and lows -- snails eat every single carrot seedling. Amy Stewart was no exception, but unlike many novices, the native Texan kept a diary of her efforts to make the land around her Santa Cruz cottage bloom. That yearlong chronicle is now a charming, humorous book..."
Idaho Statesman
Sunday, January 7, 2001
"...the perfect book for the armchair winter gardener. Charmingly told, this is the story of a first-time gardener and her journey through all the mishaps and discoveries common to all who have ever been bitten by the gardening bug."
Sacramento Bee
Sunday, February 3, 2001
"An immensely readable book about learning, creating, and enjoying the garden-and life."
Library Journal
"How-to gardening books about; how-not-to gardening memoirs are rarer....Along with witty descriptions of her mistakes, the author shares her solutions. She gives beginning gardeners tips on making earthworm manure, improving the soil by sheet composting, encouraging beneficial insects, and sharing excess produce with neighbors. Written in a humorous, conversational style, this book is recommended for public libraries."
Nashville Tennessean
Sunday, January 7, 2001
"From the Ground Up, tells Amy Stewart's highs and lows of making things grow in a quirky and humorous way."
Pat Stone
(Editor, GreenPrints)
"Every gardener starts out blissfully innocent--and woefully ignorant. Amy Stewart lets us share her journey through all the mishaps and discoveries of gardeners and makes the trip informative, honest, enjoyable, totally worthwhile, and, at times, outright hilarious"
Bridgewater, NJ Forecast
December 2000
"Describes how a dream of creating her first garden was transformed by hard work, determination, and difficult lessons into a beautiful plot of land and how a year of planting seeds, battling pests, weeding, watering, and composting changes her into an enthusiastic gardener."
AZCentral.com
"My Big Mouth" by Laurie Notaro
"...To tell you the truth, I wasn't too thrilled with the prospect of reading [From the Ground Up]. The story of a first garden didn't exactly get my literary saliva glands pumping, and I was sure I was going to be bored to death.
Boy was I wrong.
For anyone who's ever watched a flower that they planted bloom, for anyone who's ever harvested their first tomato, for anyone who's ever held onto a houseplant for more than a month, not only will you find this book a good read, it will almost enchant you."
