Buy new:
$26.35
FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 23 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: High Quality Essentials LLC
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Tuesday, April 23 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, April 18. Order within 4 hrs 52 mins
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$26.35 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$26.35
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon
Ships from
Amazon
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Monday, April 22 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, April 18. Order within 12 hrs 37 mins
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Used - Good: All pages and cover are intact (including the dust cover, if applicable). Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. May include "From the library of" labels. Shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Item may be missing bundled media.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Other Sellers on Amazon
Added
$26.33
FREE Shipping
Get free shipping
Free shipping within the U.S. when you order $35.00 of eligible items shipped by Amazon.
Or get faster shipping on this item starting at $7.33 . (Prices may vary for AK and HI.)
Learn more about free shipping
on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Sold by: Bookworm_CT
Sold by: Bookworm_CT
(1163 ratings)
99% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$26.34
FREE Shipping
Get free shipping
Free shipping within the U.S. when you order $35.00 of eligible items shipped by Amazon.
Or get faster shipping on this item starting at $7.33 . (Prices may vary for AK and HI.)
Learn more about free shipping
on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Sold by: BUCKINGHAM STORE
Sold by: BUCKINGHAM STORE
(28 ratings)
100% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$26.35
FREE Shipping
Get free shipping
Free shipping within the U.S. when you order $35.00 of eligible items shipped by Amazon.
Or get faster shipping on this item starting at $7.33 . (Prices may vary for AK and HI.)
Learn more about free shipping
on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Sold by: SBA Book Store
Sold by: SBA Book Store
(76 ratings)
100% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden Hardcover – January 19, 2000

4.4 out of 5 stars 144

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$26.35","priceAmount":26.35,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"26","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"35","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"xeVLZhDH6tRZOZquZkF7gJfb%2BuqXAW0kYaTKUSFhmsKdZ%2Fd3dmcfiVSfsYR01dBRv69rA%2FTFCIvIel6IKduIU%2B3wwYAEp3v2oUDy34VHsHoTztGYdTZXrRk%2BzRdapn75zWqIoCxjcljtX6Kalfp3GC7rkQE%2FWmhdb1VkT%2B1y9le74mbb3bAgue8mZ5g3ahjf","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$8.63","priceAmount":8.63,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"63","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"xeVLZhDH6tRZOZquZkF7gJfb%2BuqXAW0ki7NaBCXIViCSFOrS73lozbEEJTS24wBl4tf9xTjmbt1CMa1HBfajPuw5H4s356XhngnwFg9qQelCxSXQD6Hujcp7%2BzcdhxRUfYWiSSURq72pCDzwt5w1O87yMuR9F1rka9HwDSQeWX5Hm7MZgeoMcrEav%2FBr5R5I","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

"A treasure trove of delightful stories, filled with wit, wisdom, and know-how for all gardens—a rare horticultural treat." —Carl H. Klaus, author of My Vegetable Love and Weathering Winter

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.


The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now

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

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Algonquin Books; First Edition (January 19, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1565122402
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565122406
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 1 x 7.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 144

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Amy Stewart
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Amy Stewart is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books, including the new Kopp Sisters series, which began with Girl Waits With Gun. The series is based on the true story of three remarkable sisters who lived in New Jersey a hundred years ago.

Amy has also written six nonfiction books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world, including the New York Times bestsellers The Drunken Botanist, Wicked Bugs, Wicked Plants, and Flower Confidential.

She lives in Portland with her husband Scott Brown, a rare book dealer. When she isn't writing, she's making art, which you can see on Instagram, or teaching art and writing classes online.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
144 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2015
Really enjoyed this little garden memoir. Brought back a lot of memories of all my first gardening attempts in different parts of the country (and world), only to learn that all those little tries were simply a warm-up for my own garden: the one I made (and continue to build on) in - what I consider - the first house I truly owned (and that truly owned me).

Ms. Stewart has a wonderful sense of humor, and a terrific eye for describing the absurdities that working in the sun and rain and soil brings to every true gardener (new, or not). But she just barely touches on the painful, heart-wrench that will come when I have to leave this (always) work-in-progress to someone else; someone else who will have to learn where the one special yellow columbine comes up (and has come up for the past almost 17 years); the one that's survived being pulled and broken off at the crown by various unseeing and uncaring so-called professional gardeners. (And there are so many more of those survivors in my garden.)

Leaving friends all over the United States (and the world) has been hard beyond belief over the past fifty-some years. But abandoning my garden - handing it over to someone who will have no idea what that rose I planted next to the garage door means to me, and meant to my mother... that's almost unfathomable pain.

I also know that very soon I'll need to begin my letter to the new caretaker of my 100 year old house and garden and hope that they'll care about it enough to see it through all four seasons before making any drastic changes. I pray they'll love the centurion cherry tree that's part of this garden's history as much as I do, crazy big roots and all.

So, thanks Amy for this terrific little book. I wish it had been longer. I grew up in Monterey and went to UCSC for a while so felt right at home in her garden.
2 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2013
I read this book shortly after reading French Dirt by Richard Goodman and to be honest, I bought it because it the ebook version was on sale for $1.99 and you can't beat that with a stick. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Amy Stewart is a very good writer. She has made writing her habit and it shows. She articulates her thoughts very well on paper.

I'm a gardener myself and I'm always curious to know how others found themselves drawn to the gardening life. She shared both her successes and failures. It struck me as an honest account of learning how to tend a garden. She shared a few recipes which I found a little silly. That was the only thing I thought unnecessary. It seemed forced somehow. This isn't a cookbook, after all.

Gardeners will be able to relate to her experiences and new gardeners will be encouraged to pick up a spade. Failure be damned! If you dedicate enough time and patience and plant enough seeds something is bound to take hold and when it does it makes your whole body smile. This is what she shares with the reader. I recommend it. Enjoy!
9 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2014
I'm so not alone! I was just embarking on my very first garden when I was reading this book. I love Amy Stewart's writing style (I started with "Wicked Plants" and then "Wicked Bugs" and then this one. It is a quick, easy, and funny read and anyone attempting or seriously contemplating starting their own garden will absolutely relate to the ups and downs Amy writes about in starting her first garden. I also love the tips and tricks, and sometimes recipes at the end of each chapter. I gave my first copy (that's right, my "first" copy) to a friend for Christmas and she, too, loved it just as much. I then had to buy another copy and have now read it twice! Great book, enjoy!
One person found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2010
Like another reviewer here, I enjoyed this book because I want to start gardening. But as a newbie, I don't know exactly where to begin. Reading about Amy Stewart's attempts at gardening -- and the lessons she learned -- gave me a good sense of what not to do, how to fix mistakes, and what elements are needed for a great garden.

Of course, I can't get through any book, no matter how great the topic, if it isn't written well. And happily Stewart is also a funny, self-reflective writer with an engaging voice.

Hope there's a part II!
3 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2013
I don't know of any other book quite like this one. Amy Stewart really captures the mindset of the beginning gardener with all its joys, mysteries and hardships. Her saga is interwoven with some viable tips which are an additional plus. If you have been hit with the gardening bug, whether you live on the east coast or the west as she does, whether you are into one specific type of plant or eclectic, you will be able to relate to her journey of horticultural discovery. Going to suggest this to members of the local gardening club. A thoughtful, enjoyable and useful book.
2 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2017
Such a wonderful book. I've made all the mistakes. I've had the joy and disappointment. She writes beautifully. i sent a copy to a friend who is not a gardener, and she said it made her want to be a gardener. Love that. It's not just a gardening book - it's a book about life.
2 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2017
Liked it. Interesting and didn't put me to sleep. What I don't like is having to write a longer review so it will be accepted.
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2013
Ms Stewart knows how to tell a story! She does a great job of balancing failure with hope and success with humility; she blithely ignores ignorance and follows her heart and makes her readers laugh with the way she rats herself out. Her vignets about creating a garden beside a tourist-generating ocean-front boardwalk are spot on, and she brings Santa Cruz to life in a way that includes both stardust and regular old garden dust. Nicely done.
One person found this helpful
Report