Amy Stewart had a simple dream. She wanted a garden.
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.
