this personally, even though I was far from the
only one urging folks to consume more.
Why was this happening? And what more
could be done to achieve the needed 300 per
cent increase to between 9 and 11 servings a day that
most experts (according to the OmniHeart Study)
believe to be the amount needed to truly make a
difference in diabetes, heart disease, and of course
obesity?
I decided to go back to the starting line and begin
to run the whole race by doing something entirely new. During my earlier TV
career as the Galloping Gourmet, I was awarded the Broken Wooden Spoon by
Weight Watchers International. The company described me as public enemy
number one to all those making healthy choices.
Clearly, in the 1,000 new TV programs we’ve made since 1987, we have
changed—and Weight Watchers did eventually send me an unbroken spoon!
However, even those changes had not made the adjustments that our modern
world now needs.
I wondered if I could help others to reach these goals with a little sweat eq
uity in my own backyard and enthusiastically pass my experiences on.
The home that my wife, Treena, and I built and moved into in April 2001 is
situated with views facing to the west and south over the fab
ulous Skagit Valley, one of the most productive agricultural
delta valleys in the world, just halfway between Seattle, Wash
ington, and Vancouver, British Columbia. The design of the
house was inspired by our love of boats—it’s a mere 1,400-
square-foot “cabin” that uses its limited space in much the same
way as a maritime architect might have designed it. Called Non
such Cottage, after a small sailboat we once owned (and, purely
coin cidentally, after the infamously overembellished castle
built by King Henry VIII in the south of England), our cottage
WHY I DECIDED TO GROW A GARDEN • 3