Cancer, Community, and the Healing Power of a Garden

When Chris Montesano, of Sonora, was six years old, his mother handed him a handful of seeds — his grandfather’s beans, brought to the United States from the family’s ancestral home in southern Italy — and showed him how to plant them. He fell in love with growing things that day and never stopped.

That lifelong love of gardening has been a vehicle for community throughout Chris’ life, from urban gardens he planted in San Francisco to feed the unhoused as part of the Catholic Worker Movement to the nonprofit farm he ran in Calaveras County for decades, which hosted retreats and supportive programs for patients with AIDS. Now, that sense of connection through gardening has become a source of healing for Chris, too.

In 2025, Chris was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. After experiencing back pain for some time, further testing revealed cancer-related fractures in his spine and PSA levels thousands of times higher than normal. Chris immediately began coordinated hormone and radiation therapy through Adventist Health Sonora and UCSF, grateful for a care team that worked seamlessly together. “The treatment and care are excellent,” he shared.

Even still, cancer treatment was hard on Chris.

“I got pneumonia after my radiation treatment, and my immune system was very depleted,” he explains. “I couldn’t leave my house for weeks; everyone wore masks around me. I was in a really vulnerable position.”

But as it always had, the garden served as a sustaining source of connection.

As part of Blue Zones Project Tuolumne County, Chris had already been teaching gardening classes and helping to form a local garden club in Sonora. The core group includes six to ten regular attendees and a broader network of more than 60 community members. They connect often to plan planting calendars, learn techniques, and tour one another’s gardens. And when Chris became too weak to tend his own garden, those same members stepped in.

“During my treatment, friends from the garden club helped me plant tomatoes,” Chris says. One member, Jerry O’Day, harvested from Chris’s garden all season long while Chris relied on a walker due to cancer in his hip and femur. At the end of the summer, Chris made pasta sauce with those tomatoes and hosted a gathering for the club at his home as a gesture of thanks. “They got me through a rough time, and I am so grateful for that.”

Combined with treatment, diet changes, and the support of his friends and family, Chris gradually regained strength. Today, he walks 30–40 minutes a day and is back in the greenhouse growing kale, arugula, garlic, lettuce, and even purple sweet potatoes – a staple longevity superfood in Okinawa, Japan, one of the world’s original Blue Zones. He and the garden club are already planning a fall harvest festival, complete with a potluck featuring food grown in each member’s garden.

Reflecting on the last year, Chris calls his cancer journey a gift. “It’s an opportunity to love more,” he says. “I can wake up every day and learn to love better.”