From the Ground Up: The Story of A First Garden [Hardcover]

Amy Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

How-to gardening books abound; how-not-to gardening memoirs are rarer. When Stewart and her husband bought their first home in California, she was eager to grow the bountiful, colorful garden she had so long envisioned. With much enthusiasm and little knowledge, she began her weekly trek to the local nursery to stock up on all varieties of seedlings. Why, she wondered, did they not flourish after being planted in the bare backyard? Only after many mistakes, much expense, and worrisome encounters with weeds and bugs was she able to transform her little plot into "a garden with soul," jumbled and luxuriant. Along with a witty description of her mistakes, the author shares her solutions. She gives other 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.DIlse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Stewart, a young Texan, creates her first garden from scratch in the beach town of Santa Cruz, California. Although the rental bungalow she shares with her husband, Scott, is close enough to the town's boardwalk for its amusement-park aromas and roller-coaster cries to infiltrate the not-so-private space of their house and yard, she rolls up her sleeves anyway and sets about beautifying the neighborhood. Accompanied by her feline pals, Stewart pursues a commendable path, one taken by a flourishing society of green thumbs bent on eradicating weeds and cultivating the soil so that flowers will grow and vegetables will prosper. In an episodic style, she writes of her progress from a novice with little know-how to a developing and altogether enthusiastic gardener intent on enriching a small plot of land. At the close of each chapter, Stewart offers recipes and tips to help ease the way for readers unfamiliar with garden basics. In a first book filled with promise, Stewart tellingly recounts the making of a garden and the essential life lessons the act of gardening so often teaches. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565122402
• ISBN-13: 978-1565122406
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #420,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Welcome! I am the author of five books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world. I live in Eureka, California, where my husband and I own an antiquarian bookstore called Eureka Books.

When I'm not writing books or traveling to do research, I'm on the road speaking to audiences at garden clubs, bookstores, botanical gardens, libraries, and universities. I've even started doing "virtual" author visits by webcam or videoconference.

Check the blog posts below for more information and updates. I hope you'll get in touch!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How a gardener is born!, June 26, 2001

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From the Ground Up: The Story of A First Garden (Hardcover)

Amy Stewart tells the story of how she got to Santa Cruz & took over a patch of seaside earth in which a couple of fruit trees, a handful of shrubs & a host of weeds fought for life.

Each chapter includes helpful tips on neighborly propagation, composting, worm juice, rose pruning techniques, how to make a bug love you & concocting a gardener's bath. They are not what you think - some of this novice's results are hilarious while others are downright commonsensical. One of the first tips she gives us is on Making a Sun Map - do give it a go - I haven't looked at my garden the same since I discovered this clue.

Alongside the story of this young woman's determination to create a garden in which the plants will live up to her vision, she remembers family moments from her childhood while facing down obstinate natives more wily than her. Talk about turf wars!

A fine companion for anyone contemplating becoming addicted to gardening! Amy Stewart has since moved to northern California where she is hard at work on her second garden &, I hope, her second book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From dreamer to doer, January 12, 2001

By 

Joann Sonenstein (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From the Ground Up: The Story of A First Garden (Hardcover)

For those who enjoy digging in the dirt or simply admiring gardens, Amy Stewart's From the Ground Up is a charming read. The book offers many practical tips but its appeal is more than a "how to" manual. The reader shares Ms. Stewart's excitement in planting her first flowers and veggies in the ocean climate of Santa Cruz, CA, discovering the hard way what really works. The author shops for soil amendments and ladybugs the way some women revel in a Saks Fifth Avenue sale. Recipes using garden bounty pepper the narrative. The mood is like a cozy chat between friends. All this unfolds against a backdrop of a roller coaster next door, tourists stealing plants and cats gamboling in the greenery. Curl up in a comfy chair in a pleasant spot and enjoy the gardening expoeriences of Ms. Stewart from dreamer to doer.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True to Heart and Place, April 6, 2001

By 

Kelly Marine Brown (Santa Cruz, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From the Ground Up: The Story of A First Garden (Hardcover)

Amy Stewart captures the essence of gardening and living in Santa Cruz, CA. This is a gentle and graceful book that will make you want to run to your local garden center and buy everything, then go home and spend the whole weekend getting dirty. You will greatly enjoy this book regardless of the size or state of your garden or yard. A wonderful read, very well written, almost poetic at times...you will love it.