Mel Bartholomew , a graduate of Georgia Tech in Civil Engineering, took up gardening as a hobby after retiring from his own Engineering Consulting Firm. His first book Square Foot Gardening became America's largest selling gardening book ever with over a million copies sold. Since the huge success of his book, Barholomew created the non-profit Square Foot Gardening Foundation, to bring better gardening to all people of all ages around the world.