Solana Beach gardener Kelli Pease has written her debut book, “Grown with Love: Inspiring Garden Stories”, a collection of stories from over 50 gardeners.
“Every gardener has a personal journey and the ones featured in these pages deeply moved me, showing how their gardens became places of healing, connection and self-expression,” Pease writes in her book’s introduction.
“Grown with Love” officially launches on Sept. 27 and Pease will host a book talk and signing at Solana Beach flower shop Native Poppy on Saturday, Oct. 11 at 5 p.m. Published through the Self Publishing Agency, the book will also be available for purchase in SOCIÉTÉ Fine Flowers on Via de la Valle and Camino Books in the Del Mar village.
Pease is a relatively new gardener, starting when she and her husband Billy moved into their Solana Beach home just before the pandemic in 2020. She discovered a love of gardening after planting beds outside her new home as one way to deal with the anxiety of the time. She learned and drew inspiration from her grandmother Joan Davis, whose Solana Beach garden was always a magical place when she was growing up. Pease became enamored with cut flowers and the joy it brought in giving away all the extra blooms.
Kelli Pease’s new book “Grown with Love: Inspiring Garden Stories”. (Karen Billing)
“The plants give me a perspective I didn’t have before I was a gardener,” writes Pease in the book. “By paying full attention to the plants, I’m able to zoom out and realize how truly extraordinary life is. Somehow my perceived problems melt away while in the garden. Even when nothing is blooming or when the garden job isn’t glamorous, the activity has a deeply calming effect on my nervous system.”
Pease, who works full time in marketing, eventually started the Flower Remedy with a mission to give away one million flowers to spread happiness and healing, focusing on the senior population through senior homes, the Rancho Santa Fe Senior Center and Meals on Wheels. A month ago she launched a nonprofit called The One Million Flowers Foundation to “promote well-being, hope, and connection through giving away flowers to the elderly, individuals facing difficult times and to the broader community as random acts of kindness.” (onemillionflowers.org)
Last year, Pease also started her own Books and Blooms Little Free Library in front of her home, which paired her love of flowers with her deep love of books. Locals can grab a new book to read along with a bouquet of free, fresh flowers.
Pease had nurtured the idea for the book in the back of her mind but started working on it seriously after opening her Little Free Library.
Flowers in “Grown with Love” author Kelli Pease’s garden, (Courtesy Kelli Pease)
The book is divided into sections on healing, connecting and sharing with chapters on topics like mental and physical well-being in the garden, connecting with community, art and creativity, teaching, and giving away food and flowers. Each section ends with practical tips from Pease about the lessons learned from the stories shared from the featured gardeners, from recommendations for planting a memorial garden, small changes to help nurture the land, craft ideas, how to share homegrown harvests and a starter kit for growing your own cut flowers. Pease’s top five easy-to-grow cut flowers are cosmos, zinnias, dahlias, sunflowers and sweet peas.
“I first decided on what chapters I wanted, then I went through my mental Rolodex,” said Pease of seeking out her book’s contributors. Many she knew personally or had connected with online. Others she found online doing research. “Everyone was pretty open and excited to get their stories out there.”
“Grown with Love” author Kelli Pease giving out free flowers on her birthday in Solana Beach. (Courtesy Kelli Pease)
In the book, gardeners share about finding healing in the garden with health challenges like cancer, MS and chronic pain or using a garden to find peace in the midst of grief or postnatal depression.
Encinitas’ Lauren Jones Paul shares about using her garden to grow natural dyes for textiles for her business Sound as Color. Another artist, Encinitas’ Deana Coveney shares her process of pressing flowers into clay for her nature-inspired pottery.
Stacy Bostrum, a local who helped rejuvenate the gardens at local Solana Beach elementary schools, writes about starting the Solana Beach Junior Gardener program.
From the early reviews of the book, one of the most inspiring stories comes from Calliope Correia of Fresno, who founded Land Together, a garden curriculum program run in nine different California state prisons. Pease reached out to her blindly after reading her story and was grateful she was willing to share in “Grown with Love.”
“One thing I’ve learned from this work is that most of the people in prison are carrying intense trauma from neglect or abuse,” Correia writes in the book. “What if instead of a culture of punishment, we nurtured a culture of care and rehabilitation? Gardening is the perfect metaphor for this.”
Pease hopes her book begets blooms and sparks conversations about the love of gardening—as she notes, gardeners are incredible and you could talk with a gardener for hours and not get tired.
Right now, in the heat of San Diego summer, Pease said she is hanging on to all of her flowers until the last moment when she has to cut them down. She has a few hundred butterfly ranunculus corms in hand to get in the ground by early November so, hopefully, come spring she will have her own mini version of the Carlsbad Flower Fields.
The careful planning and the hopeful anticipation is all a part of the gardening process.
“You’re really seeing everything from seed to bloom and it really gives me such an appreciation for the full cycle of life, being present and watching it all unfold,” Pease said.
To learn more about The Flower Remedy or purchase “Grown with Love” visit floweremedy.co. Pre-sale books before the Sept. 27 release come signed with a special packet of flower seeds. The Oct. 11 book event will be held at Native Poppy, located at 142 South Cedros Avenue in Solana Beach.
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