How does her garden grow?

It was a dilemma, all right.

April Hart had wanted a spot in the Hales Trails Community Garden in Port Washington. She was on the waiting list.

But when a plot came open, it was June—well past planting season.

Hart had just started a raised garden bed at her home down the street.

“I put a bunch of stuff in there and then a week later they called me,” she said. “I was hesitant to do it because it was so late in the season.”

But the 15-by-15-foot square was already tilled and ready to go, so Hart gave it a shot.

Her next surprise was her huge harvest.

“I don’t know what to do with my zucchini. I was giving them away. I had 10 a day,” she said. “I’ll never plant four zucchini plants again.”

That was just one of many educational episodes in Hart’s horticultural endeavor.

Deciding what to plant at the start of summer was already a bit of a calculated risk.

“I just bought seeds from True Value, threw them in and hoped for the best,” she said. “Let me just try. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

She got starter plants as well, some from DreamPort Harvest Market in Port, and grew tomatoes, beans, beets, broccoli, arugula and kale, along with dill and parsley.

Hart made the five-minute walk to her plot multiple times per week. She learned to visit in the morning for 30 to 45 minutes before it got hot outside and before mosquitoes swarmed around noon.

Other bugs also did their thing. Hart is learning how to protect arugula and other green leafy plants from caterpillars, who live up to their reputation.

Harvesting zucchini required daily trips “or overnight they will explode,” Hart said. “When they’re so big they’re not good to cook with. They’re better for bread.”

Weeding became a regular chore.

“Even in a couple of days they will take over,” Hart said.

When her plants started to grow, she used a plant ID app on her phone to figure out if they were weeds. Other lessons came courtesy of friendly fellow gardeners or from trial and error.

“This is my first time ever having a garden, so it’s a steep learning curve,” she said. “There are failures along the way.”

This isn’t, however, Hart’s first foray into plants.

The Brown Deer native earned a communications degree from Point Park University in Pittsburgh and spent several years in Los Angeles working in production for shows like “Top Chef,” “The Amazing Race” and “Top Model.” Being on the production side, Hart said she rarely had contact with the actors.

Her urban environment led Hart to houseplants, of which she had many.

“I have the ability to watch a plant and see what it needs,” she said.

Hart and her husband Nathan met in Indonesia while she was on vacation and he was working for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She traveled most of the year for her job, and they came to Port to be closer to her family and to start one with a less-hectic schedule.

Hart now works from home as a lead producer for the Dallas-based mobile games company PeopleFun, which invented Wordscapes. Nathan works in renewable energies.

Gardening provides a much-needed escape from the digital world. Hart pops on headphones and listens to a book or music while relishing her hobby.

“I’m on screens all day,” Hart said.

Once Hart has her harvest, she likes to figure out what to do with it. She took up cooking about a decade ago.

“It’s relaxing and rewarding. It is nice to pick a harvest and come home and figure out how you’re going to cook with it,” Hart said.

Nathan uses the fresh kale in smoothies. Their 5-year-old daughter loves beans and broccoli.

“She gets really excited when I pick something,” Hart said.

Hart has a subscription to New York Times Cooking and makes a broad range of Italian and American fare, like ground turkey with zucchini meatballs with pesto and tomato sauce and parsley and mint pasta. What she cooks with depends on when the plant is ready. Some produce came in early while others, like broccoli that was planted in June, is sprouting now.

“There’s an element of patience,” Hart said of gardening.

She plans to continue her community garden commitment next year and may add flowers to her mix of produce.

Between Hart’s houseplants, raised beds and the community garden plot, Nathan has told his wife, “I think you have a plant problem.”

Hart said her husband has his own thing.

“He buys speakers and rebuilds them,” she said. “I have plants and he has speakers.”