Meet a Real Garden Coach: Katie Oglesby, the Garden Girl, in Walworth County, Wisconsin

This garden coach is helping her Wisconsin community live garden-to-table lifestyles with their own kitchen gardens. 

At just five years old, Katie was diagnosed with Kawasaki syndrome, an inflammatory disease that causes swelling in your blood vessels and coronary arteries. Even after recovering, she suffered allergic reactions to antibiotics and countless sinus infections, before being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, a condition in which your immune system attacks your thyroid. 

“I continued to battle with annoyingly persistent health issues into my adult life, just accepting it was the hand I was dealt,” she said. “Get more medications and keep moving” became her motto. 

After growing increasingly frustrated with a healthcare system that bounced her from specialist to specialist, she began to look into making healthier choices on her own. She integrated more fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables into her diet, which, she says, completely changed her relationship with food.

Ten years ago, she started her own garden to grow a wider variety of organic food, and that is when she finally began to reclaim her health. Her garden was not only a way to feed her family and exercise enjoyably, but also a restorative place where she could slow down and reflect on the lifestyle she really wanted—a place to feed her well being.

Now, Katie’s ready to get her hands dirty to create gardens for others in her Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, community to help them nourish their bodies and feed their well being. Her passion for healthy living and gardening melded, and she became the Garden Girl. Katie wants everyone to have a garden and enjoy a happier, healthier version of themselves.

Katie designs and installs beautiful culinary gardens for gardeners of all skill levels to help clients reach their health and lifestyle goals. But, as Katie reasoned, gardening and overall well being go hand in hand. That’s why, in addition to becoming a member of the Garden Coach Society in June 2020, Katie also enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to become a health coach.

She uses her training to help clients detox their daily routine and use food as medicine for a more holistic approach to their health. Her personalized private coaching sessions are not, she warns, a program for you to count calories; they are a reexamination of your entire lifestyle, including your nutrition, to increase your energy, feel connected to your food and your body, and sustain healthier habits for a lifetime. 

I'm so happy Katie is a member of our Gardenary community, and I love sharing stories like hers with you. Follow Katie to see how she continues to help others fill up on all the good stuff!

Learn more about Katie Oglesby's mission.

Read about more of our fantastic Gardenary-trained garden coaches and their successful garden coaching businesses.