How does her garden grow?

Sharon Slocum, a certified landscape designer, and a passionate fruit and vegetable gardener for 40 years, kicked off the six-week West Roxbury Reads series earlier this month with a slide show and tips about how even beginning gardeners can integrate vegetable and fruit planting into the smallest yards, containers and even indoors.

Slocum’s presentation is the first of two dozen lectures, activities and demonstrations planned by the Friends of the West Roxbury Branch Library as they sponsor a community reads series focusing on Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, “In Defense of Food.”

Pollan, an investigative journalist, critic of agribusiness and author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” will speak as the capstone of the series at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 12, proceeded by a Friends-only reception at the library at 6:30 p.m.

For details of upcoming events in the series, see www.FriendsWRLibrary.org or pick up a bookmark calendar at the library, the Paper Store or Allandale Farm Store.

As a child in a large British Columbian seacoast family in the 1950s, Slocum learned improvisational gardening at her mother’s knee. Nothing was thrown out. Compost was composed of kitchen scraps, raked leaves, manure and kelp brought home by her fisherman father. Tomatoes, squash, peas and beans were trained to coil aloft on the garden fences or pruned tree limbs.

Tubers such as potatoes, onions, turnips, as well as corn were overwintered in the root cellar under the house. Canned berries and fruits and tomatoes enlivened their winter meals. Slocum’s mother was able to feed her large family almost entirely from her garden, with the addition of fresh fish her father caught, and she continued gardening until her late 80s.

Slocum has followed her mother’s example while she raised two boys and moved around the U.S.

Like her mother, she built her compost pile from table scraps (not protein or dairy products which smell and attract rodents), leaves, garden cuttings and lawn clippings. From their earliest years, her sons helped in the garden; she believes that helping to plant and reap were sources of security for the boys.

“They knew that they were connected with nature and that we would always be able to sustain ourselves from our land,” she said.

Today, Slocum’s mission is to inspire everyone to grow their own food, to grow more food and for longer periods throughout the year, “not only outside and through all seasons, but right on your kitchen counter,” where she raises pea and sunflower sprouts.

“Window boxes in an unheated sunny room flourish with arugula and kale,” she said.

Gardening is possible, Slocum said, for anyone of any age, including people who live in apartments, have no sun, a small yard and the many on tight budgets — if they think outside the box to solve their gardening limitations. For example, peas and beans can be encouraged to be more productive by growing vertically without the expense of fancy nursery pyramids or trellises; instead they can be grown on an old ladder, wire fencing or sturdy string. People with little sun can plant their tomatoes in wheeled pots or old kids’ wagons, so they can be moved.

Or the gardener can work out a trade with a neighbor: a sunny planting space in exchange for free vegetables.

Another Slocum trick for those who don’t have the budget, the room or the inclination to grow in pots or raised beds was simply to bring bags of Coast of Maine garden soil into the yard or porch, make X-shaped cuts on the top or sides of the plastic bags, and plant the seeds or transplants directly in the bagged soil.

“This eliminates expense, trouble and weeds, and can give you a bumper crop of vegetables,” Slocum said. “With a little fussing, you can also lace in vegetables and flowers that will drape, making your bag-planter visually attractive.”

Slocum is a big believer in weaving vegetables and fruit trees into decorative flower gardens. Kale, asparagus, rhubarb, even lettuce and parsley, she said, have gorgeous leaves which complement flowering perennials and annuals while enhancing salads, pies and cobblers. Blueberry bushes are wonderful border shrubs, although birds may garner more berries than the gardener.

When choosing to replace a tree, if you have a yard, think about planting a hardy fruit tree for your zone; they are wonderfully decorative, while providing a winter’s worth of healthful home-grown eating.

Slocum said that anyone interested in the environment and eating local, organic food, should grow vegetables themselves, not just for the food and the cost savings, but for the exercise, appreciation of nature and the psychological boost. Slocum’s garden “bibles’ which she recommends to novices and experienced gardeners alike, are “The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening” by J.I. Rodale, editor, and “Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew.