A Green Granny's Garden

Book excerpt: Urban gardening for beginners While Fionna will be the first to tell you she's not actually a Granny in the biological sense, she is most definitely a wise woman of the world who meets all the criteria for anyone's favourite Gran. When she decided to improve her health and grow her own food she had to find somewhere to grow it. Living in urban Auckland severely limited her options. While she could manage window boxes of micro-greens, she yearned for more space - and was utterly delighted to eventually find herself with a plot in the Grey Lynn Community Garden. Written from her experiences over the course of a year (give or take a few weeks) she documents the sheer delight and pleasure of exploring urban gardening as a beginner in a communal environment. the experience has brought her immense joy and some wild and wonderful moments of unexpected humour. In a breathtakingly honest, direct and fabulously original and delightfully wacky way, she takes the reader by the hand and shares her exploits, adventures, misadventures, successes, failures and enthusiasms as she discovers what works and what doesn't. Wonderfully honest, supremely life affirming and a book for gardeners and non-gardeners alike, if you aren't inspired by the end of A GREEN GRANNY'S GARDEN to go forth and plant then we're dreadfully sorry - you might as well go and put both feet in the grave right now.