Leading garden designer Bunny Guinness joins forces with physiotherapist Jacqueline Knox in this unprecedented guide to healthy gardening. Learn how to…
Achieve better strength, balance, and flexibility in preparation for gardening’s rigors
Practice aerobic and toning workouts in your own ‘outdoor gym,’ complete with benches, beams, balls, and other props
Use plants and hard landscaping to fashion space for working out and winding down
Look after your back, shoulders, hands, elbows, wrists, knees, and other ‘trouble spots’
Choose the best lawn mower and most useful ergonomic hand tools
Combat irritants such as weeds, pests, and diseases
Cultivate a wildflower meadow, a wildlife garden, and other low-maintenance spaces Grow healthy, easy-care fruits and vegetables

It’s no secret that working in the garden is an all-around health booster. In addition to the sheer pleasure and sense of achievement it brings, gardening increases stamina, builds muscle tone, and burns enough calories to rival a session at the gym. Yet gardening’s repetitive actions often put stress on the body, resulting in aches, pains, and sore muscles. This one-stop guide will equip you to garden in a healthier way, whether you want to optimize your fitness, avoid injury, or simply enhance the sense of wellbeing you derive from your garden.

Pilates principles are at the heart of the step-by-step sequences that illustrate the safe way to carry out everyday tasks such as pushing wheelbarrows, lifting heavy pots, and picking low-lying fruit. Simple warm-up exercises that build core strength will prepare you for the rigors ahead, while stretches that are tailor-made for gardeners deliver aftercare to overworked muscles.

Along the way, Bunny Guinness imparts a wealth of tactics for making the garden work in harmony with your lifestyle, highlighting schemes that keep you on your toes, easy-care fruit and vegetables that leave you time to relax, and much more. Seasoned advice on choosing ergonomic tools and accessories, caring for your back, shoulders, elbows, and knees, and attaining gorgeous gardens with minimal stress makes Garden Your Way to Health and Fitness a resource that no health conscious gardener can afford to be without.

1. Elements of Garden Fitness
2. Using Your Outdoor Gym
3. Safer Gardening: Tools and Techniques
4. Design Ideas for a Healthy Lifestyle
5. Health and Fitness in the Ornamental Garden
6. Health and Fitness in the Productive Garden

Garden designer Bunny Guinness joins forces with physiotherapist Jacqueline Knox in this one-stop guide to all-around garden health. Step-by-step sequences based on the Pilates method illustrate the safe way to push wheelbarrows, lift heavy pots, pick low-lying fruit, and much more in a way that boosts fitness while avoiding stress and strains.

The authors also detail a wealth of tactics for achieving beautiful gardens that require a range of exertion levels. They describe planting designs that are best for time-pressed gardeners, how to use daily garden maintenance regimes to stay active, and how to design an outdoor gym. Illustrated sequences guide gardeners through physical exercises to suit their fitness levels.

Looking after oneself is also key to good garden health. To this end, a comprehensive guide to growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs, a rundown of the best gardening clothes and ergonomic tools, tips for preventing and treating common ailments, and guidelines for winding down the healthy way complete the indispensable resource.

“As a lifelong gardener and proponent of regular exercise, I’ve been waiting for a book like this as long as I can remember! The authors do a magnificent job of relating the world of gardening to the world of good health, and even the most reluctant gardener will find in this book reasons to break out the (ergonomic!) garden tools and get fit.” –Tracy DiSabato-Aust, Author of The Well-tended Perennial Garden and The Well-Designed Mixed Garden, and triathlete

"Do you think I might convince my husband there's no need for biking or kayaking because he can get fit helping in the garden? Oh well, the book will help me stay strong and injury-free so I can accomplish all those tasks I'd love to assign to him."

Seattle Times

“The new book, Garden Your Way to Health and Fitness, is a manifesto for keeping gardeners injury-free, a road map to fitness through gardening. What a time saving concept—work out as you garden rather than work out in your garden.”

Seattle Times

"Sounds crazy, but you'll soon be convinced by this book: Garden the right way and you can get a good workout."

- Time

“If you do it right, gardening is mainly an endurance exercise that increases overall fitness, according to Bunny Guiness and Jacqueline Knox.”

- Denver post

"--turns working in the landscape into an exercise regimen. The book is not about cultural practices for plants, it's about how you handle yourself in the garden"

Washington Post

“Information on planting and pruning, weed control and composting, greenhouses and more is intertwined with useful tips on how to get more enjoyment out of the garden while protecting and improving health and quality of life at the same time.”


“More than just an exercise manual, this book offers practical advice on designing garden spaces that fit your lifestyle and includes creative ideas for walkways, ornamental gardens, lawns, borders, trees, hedges, and fruit, vegetable and herb gardens. Liberally illustrated with photographs of both stunning gardens and exercise sequences, the book is a source of inspiration for both personal fitness and garden design.”

Library Journal

“The authors have done a phenomenal job of combining both the practices of fine gardening and good health.”

Bunny Guinness is a leading British garden designer who has run her own landscape design practice since 1987. She is a panelist on BBC Radio 4's "Gardener's Question Time," writes a weekly column for the Sunday Telegraph, and has written several books, including the bestselling Family Gardens.The recipient of six gold medals for her Chelsea Flower Show gardens, Bunny takes on private garden design projects all over the world.

Publisher: Timber Press
Distributor: Workman Publishing Company
Publication Date: 04-15-2008
Pages: 216
Measurements: 9.81in X 7.88in X .63in X 1.10lb