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From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden Hardcover – January 19, 2000
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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.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAlgonquin Books
- Publication dateJanuary 19, 2000
- Dimensions5 x 1 x 7.25 inches
- ISBN-101565122402
- ISBN-13978-1565122406
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From the Inside Flap
When she and her husband finished graduate school, they headed west to Santa Cruz, California. With little money in their pockets, they found a modest seaside cottage 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 - but it was a good place to start.
From the Ground Up is Stewart's chronicle of the seedlings and weeds, cats and compost, worms and watering that transform a tiny plot of earth into a glorious garden. From planting the seeds her grandmother sends to battling snails, gophers, and aphids, Stewart takes us on a tour of her coastal garden and shares the lessons she's learned the hard way. In the process, she brings her California beach town to life-complete with harbor seals, monarch butterfly migrations, and an old-fashioned, seaside amusement part just down the street.
Delighting in triumphs and confessing to a multitude of gardening sins, Stewart dishes the dirt for both the novice and experienced gardener. With helpful tips in each chapter, From the Ground Up tells the story of a young woman's determination to create a garden in which the plants struggle to live up to the gardener's vision.
From the Back Cover
"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 here own personal gardening style." (BARBARA DAMROSCH, author of The Garden Primer and Theme Gardens
"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)
"An amusing tale." (CYNTHIA KLING, Garden Design)
"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 make the trip informative, honest, enjoyable, totally worthwhile, and, at times, outright hilarious!" (PAT STONE, editor, GreenPrints magazine)
About the Author
Amy Stewart is the award-winning author of six books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world. She is the cofounder of the popular blog Garden Rant and is a contributing editor at Fine Gardening magazine. 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.
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
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,588,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #162 in West Region Gardening (Books)
- #375 in Gardening & Horticulture Essays (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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.
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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.
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!
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!






