From the Ground Up:
   The Story of A First Garden
   Amy Stewart
  2001 Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
    ISBN: 1565122402


With a beginner's zeal, this author sets out to transform her tiny plot of earth in Santa Cruz, California, into a riotous garden filled with vegetables & flowers.

Amy Stewart's humorous chronicle of the blooming of weeds in her first garden & the lessons she learned, brings to life her lovely seaside town, complete with harbor seals, monarch butterflies, amusement park & neighbors.

“Gardens don't happen by themselves...[they are of]human creation. It has to be thought of first. It has to be wished into being, planned for, like a wanted child.”

In Breaking Ground Amy Stewart tells the story of how she got to Santa Cruz & that patch of earth on which a couple of fruit trees, a handful of shrubs & a host of weeds fought for life.

“I should say here and now that it was my garden from the beginning. Good thing, too, because it was scarcely big enough for one of us, much less both of us. I have heard about marriages in which the wife takes the vegetable garden, the husband the flower garden...”

Having created a first garden -- first in an abandoned lot in a Chicago slum & then on a Northwestern clearcut -- Amy Stewart's efforts rang a lot of my bells & had me chuckling & shaking my head -- been there, done that!

This novice knew what she didn't want in a garden: “from the suburban Texas tract house that we finally settled in. Most of the plants I hate today grew at that house, Nandina, a dull, unimaginative shrub with leaves the color of cockroaches and stingy little berries that -- when I was foolish enough to put one in my mouth -- tasted like pennies. Century plants, whose fleshy grey arms grabbed me as I walked by...and that boring old lawn, that expanse...where my grandfather and uncles would gather to pluck weeds during family barbecues.”

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 this author 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 Amy's clue.

The second half of From the Ground Up records her first growing season in which a local holiday is interpreted, insects are debated for better or for worse, too many of this & too little of that & her frenzy over the impending arrival of her first human visitor. I could have been there!

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!

The urge to garden comes out of nowhere, like a weed in a freshly tilled patch of earth. We might spend our entire lives cocooned in cities, perhaps tending house plants along the way, it is, however, when we move to a home that has a bit of land that some gene kicks in & plant we must -- & with the imperiousness only children & “touched” monarchies are privy to, ordering our seeds & our plants to grow in tidy rows, according to our godly plan.

I'm glad Amy Stewart kept a journal of her efforts & in simple & appealing prose welcomes us to her first effort, her musings on companionship, visitors, neighbors & traffic.

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.

A native Texan, Amy Stewart received her BA & MS in Community & Regional Planning from the University of Texas. When she lived in Santa Cruz, she wrote a regular gardening column for La Gazette & has been published in various Bay Area periodicals as well as GreenPrints; American Horticulture & Bird Watcher's Digest.

I managed to roundup this gardener before she disappeared into the wilds of a new garden & she gave me a pleasing Interview! Do catch it!
(07/01/01)

Rebecca