Shawna Coronado - The Wellness Garden: Grow, Eat, and Walk Your Way to Better Health

the
Wellness Garden

GROW, EAT, AND WALK YOUR WAY TO BETTER HEALTH

SHAWNA CORONADO

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to Kelsey and Sam.
They have inspired me to have a lifestyle where I live well, love wholly, and laugh often.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks go to my dear husband and family: I love you with all my heart!

Cool Springs Press has the best and most wonderful team everMark Johanson, my editor, is also a treasured friend. I am eternally grateful to you, Mark. Your support is needed and appreciated. My marketing team, Steve Roth and Lola Honeybone, are terrific. My team includes Cathy Lane and Alyssa Bluhmthank you so very much for guiding me. I am especially grateful for the artists, designers, and assistants who help me put these books together with their colossal talent.

I thank Rick Bayless and Ron Finley for allowing me to feature their unique and powerful stories in this book. Thanks to Niki Jabbour for enabling me to get more insight into winter vegetable growing and harvesting.

Part of compiling a book is spending many long and lonely hours shooting photos at hundreds of locations. The Wellness Garden has photos of many plants or locations from Ball Horticultural, Biltmore Estate, Chanticleer, Costa Farms, Moss Mountain Farm, Peterson Garden Project, The Planters Palette garden center, WoollyPocket.com, and so many other locations and community gardensthank you one and all.

Special thanks to Diana Stoll, Jenny Nybro Peterson, Terri Curtis, Jacque Gregory, Laura Eubanks, Lamanda Joy, Liz Donaghy, Jane Schwartz Gates, David Sylvian-Czajkowski, Diane Blazek, Kylee Baumle, Christina Salwitz, and Helen Weis for helping me with photos and life in general. I am grateful to you all for your kind friendship and guidance. And to Bruce Baker and Bob Denman for teaching me so much about the ergonomics of tools.

Enormous and loving thanks to Deepa Deshmukh, my nutritionist and dear friend. She opened my eyes and taught me that food is medicine. I am now living with significantly less pain and a happier existence because of her inspiration. Deepa is generous to a fault and has kindly shared her team of researchers who helped me discover the detailed nutritive value of beans and vegetablesthank you to Anam Fatima, Humna Usmani, and Nicole Michehl.

Most especially I want to thank all my wonderful followers who come to my speeches, who order my books, and who are in touch with me via social media every single day. Your support made it possible for me to keep going when my health was at the darkest point. Im thrilled you stuck with me and cheered me on. I love you!

If I can discover less pain, more health, and a wellness lifestyle, I know that you can too. I am grateful for you and I believe in you. Keep moving forwarddo not give up!

INTRODUCTION:
WHAT IS A WELLNESS GARDEN?

THERE IS NO place I feel better than when I am surrounded by plants and nature. Gardening and spending time outdoors is, at least in my mind, the single most wonderful thing a person can do to feel well. Thats what this book is all about: defining and finding your own personal wellness and living mindfully with nature in order to reduce symptoms of common health conditions.

With the help of my nutritionist and doctors, I overcame debilitating pain from severe degenerative osteoarthritis by changing my lifestyle to incorporate better nutrition through an anti-inflammatory diet, while gardening and exercising in ways that were proactive for my condition. This wellness transition has been lifealtering for me on an intimate, emotional level as well as on a physical level.

Since I have discovered a lifestyle with significantly less pain, every day feels a little better, and I enjoy and appreciate my daily existence more than I ever did in the past. This transition began with gardening, but also includes diet and exercise. Because of this positive change in my own life, I want to inspire others to find similar relief, particularly with inflammation-generated chronic pain, but with other disorders as well. Reducing symptoms such as chronic pain, depression, and weight gain associated with conditions like arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, fibromyalgia, heart disease, and many other types of maladies without heavy medications is possible with smart diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes. I hope this book, The Wellness Garden, will help you explore and discover new ways to improve your lifestyle so that you can feel better every day.

While growing your own garden is important, visiting municipal parks, green spaces, and gardens can also be a healthful experience. Public gardens offer walking paths and therapeutic landscapes. Drought-tolerant perennials such as Russian sage, nepeta, veronica, and ornamental grasses found at the Bellevue Botanical Garden in Washington State offer color, scent, and sound that usher visitors through the garden.

My front patio herbal garden bar view shows how easy it is to creatively elevate garden beds while incorporating herb and vegetable elements. This garden brings a sense of green beauty and restorative calm to a patio or seating area, exemplifying wellness.

A wellness garden provides a mindful experience; it offers beauty, exercise, and restoration. Harvesting nutritious foods, therapeutic scents, and pleasant sounds from that garden can add to the spaces potential to heal injury and relieve anxiety. This florific summer path at the Chicago Botanic Garden ends at the Carillon Bells, which play during summer evenings.

Changing your lifestyle is challenging. But it is worth all the effort because a wellness lifestyle allows you to enjoy the specific dietary advantages of growing fresh herbs and vegetables in the garden, while encouraging you to spend more time exercising in the fresh air. Your gardening hobby can be translated into an experience that changes your life for the better.

My goal with this book is to inspire you to improve your overall health and fight a host of ailments that have become too common today. The good news is that living a wellness lifestyle, based on the principles discussed in this book, has worked for me. Even better: it can work for you too.