Bookworm: The tree that sparked a story

Sunday, October 19, 2025

In our interview series Bookworm, we chat with authors and artists about books, gardening and food. This month, we meet artist and author Zeno Sworder.  

When Zeno Sworder was growing up in Bendigo, his parents didn’t own a car or a TV, which left plenty of time for exploring his neighbourhood.   

“I loved climbing trees, and there was one tree that stood at the top of our street, and I used to spend hours in it,” he recalls. “I wanted to write a story about my relationship with that particular tree.”   

That story became Once I Was a Giant, a picture book about the friendship between a green giant and a small wanderer. “The book really rests on a much older way of seeing the natural world and the way that humans interact with it. It’s this idea that humans aren't separate or above nature, that we're just another thread in this giant web of life,” he explains.  

Pages from Once I Was a Giant

A look inside Once I Was a Giant

Creating a book is a “terribly slow process” for Sworder, who takes a year alone to do the drawings using a graphite pencil and watercolour, working at night when his wife and daughters are asleep. But his meticulous work pays off; his dreamlike illustrations carry the story with poetic rhythm.  

In and around his garden  

Now based in Melbourne, it’s no surprise that Sworder’s backyard is filled with fruit trees. There are also some “failed attempts” at bonsai, plenty of herbs that end up in his wife’s Nepalese dishes, and colourful chilli plants.  

“Whenever the kids are in the backyard, they always love the chilli plants where the chilies are kind of standing straight up trying to reach the sun,” he says.  

Pages from Once I Was a Giant

Once I Was a Giant

The artist also loves walking the streets with his children, identifying plants and admiring their seed pods and flowers.   

“That was very much a part of my childhood. I was blessed with an incredible boredom. So, I spent a lot of time studying plants and flowers. And even though I didn't know their names, I knew I could put honeysuckles to my mouth and get a little bit of a sugar hit. And I also knew that there were certain trees that produce poisonous seed pods. I really want to impart that understanding to my girls as well,” he says.  

The roots that shaped him  

Zeno's maternal grandparents came from China, and his paternal grandparents from the UK, all avid gardeners.  

“They left a really deep impression on me. They had both carried their cultures and their histories with them. And so, stepping into their houses, you got a real sense of a different world, a different way of understanding things. And I think that that was incredibly useful to me as a young person,” he explains.   

He still remembers this lesson imparted by his maternal grandmother when she was planting fruit trees in her backyard: “She said, ‘This isn't for us, we're planting these for you and for your children’. That idea of time and passing things forward, and the beauty of sharing nature in that way, really stuck with me.”   



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