In April 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama planted a kitchen garden on the White House's South Lawn. It is a garden with roots in the American past, stretching back to George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, but it is also a garden very much designed for America's future. As fresh vegetables, fruit, and herbs sprouted from the ground, this White House Kitchen Garden inspired a new conversation all across the country about the food we feed our families and the impact it has on the health and well-being of our children.

Now, in her first-ever book, American Grown, Mrs. Obama invites you inside the White House Kitchen Garden and shares its inspiring story, from the first planting to the latest harvest. Hear about her worries as a novice gardener: Would the new plants even grow? Learn about her struggles and her joys as lettuce, corn, tomatoes, collards and kale, sweet potatoes and rhubarb flourished in the freshly tilled soil. Get an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at every season of the garden's growth, with striking original photographs that bring its story to life. Try the unique recipes created by top White House chefs and made with ingredients freshly picked from the White House garden. And learn from the White House Garden team about how you can help plant your own backyard, school, or community garden.

Mrs. Obama's journey continues across the nation, sharing the stories of other gardens that have moved and inspired her. Here are the tales of a modern-day vegetable truck that brings fresh produce to underserved communities in Chicago, of Houston office workers who make the sidewalk bloom, of a New York City School that created a scented garden for the visually impaired, of a North Carolina garden that devotes its entire harvest to those less fortunate, and other stories of communities that are transforming the lives and health of their citizens.