Press Tribune: Wellness Within gets a beautiful new garden
By: Anne Stokes, Press Tribune Correspondent
Wellness Within is finally a healing oasis inside and out. The local nonprofit, which helps cancer patients, survivors and their families, offers services in nutrition, meditation, restorative yoga, art therapy and counseling free of charge to those going through some of the worst times in their lives.
"When you have a diagnosis, there's a whole person that isn't being looked at," said founder and Executive Director Patti Brown, who has been a licensed clinician for more than 20 years. "There's the medical treatments, but then there's other things that happen that folks need attention paid to, they need healing. I've always believed in mind-body medicine and the power behind it."
The center's renovation was spearheaded by landscape and garden designer Kate Bowers and her volunteer group Happy Spaces. Bowers, who has worked on projects with the television show “Yard Crashers” for the locally produced DIY Network, modeled this project in a similar fashion.
"We're taking that concept of doing a quick landscape renovation, but picking what we consider deserving recipients, like an awesome nonprofit," Bowers explained. "And we try to do it with as low a cost as possible, so most of the things are donated."
Companies from all over town lent a hand, as well as materials, to the remodeling effort. Haight Nursery donated most of the plants used in the landscaping overhaul; Middleton Gardens helped with the garden construction, installing drainage and irrigation systems; and Redback General Construction Services built custom patio furniture.
Such an effort is just what Wellness Within needs to keep its doors open to those who need their services.
"We are a nonprofit and the only way we can keep doing what we do is through the support of community members,” Brown said. “Everybody gets tired of hearing it, but it's our truth. It takes money to make the machine go, so we're really, really hoping that the community, especially the Roseville community, will get behind us and get excited about it. That's what I'm hoping for because that's what will keep us going."
For more information on Wellness Within's services or how to help, visit www.wellnesswithin.org.