[2][3] American Grown is divided into four sections (one for each season) and includes color photographs of vegetables, as well as recipes,[4] instructions for making a compost bin, and stories about community gardens in the United States.

Obama writes about the time in her life when she had "no idea that tomatoes didn’t come in green plastic trays, covered by cellophane, and that they could be any color other than pale red.

"[7] The portion of the book devoted to the White House beehive describes how an apple tree in the Children's Garden produced fruit for the first time in 25 years after the introduction of bees.

[8] Through her research for the book, Obama discovered that her maternal grandmother tended a community victory garden in Chicago.

Writer Dominique Browning also said that the garden calls the country's attention to the connection between food quality and health.