Backyardeners

“Growing your own food is like printing your own money,” – Rob Finley

What started as a conversation about how to engage my apathetic roommates in gardening our backyard, lead me to realize there is an amazing opportunity to create a network of edible gardens and employ my peers at the same time.

Backyardeners, as I plan on calling it, will be a landscaping business that will plant and maintain edible gardens while simultaneously educating the community on permaculture design.

It will be a couple years until Backyardeners is ready for business, so there’s plenty of time to work out the details. Initially it will start with my own backyard garden and a couple others my friends have asked me to tend. After a year I’ll have demonstrated that I’m a competent gardener and the network will expand.

This will give me plenty of time to work out the business logistics: developing a payment plan, recruiting other gardeners, and designing a logo, website and outreach materials. I will organize a tool-sharing program and composting infrastructure among the network of friends’ gardens during the grassroots phase and that should take care of the upfront cost of supplies.

Backyardeners will also have a community service component. First, work days will be open to the public as a means to educate the community about permaculture and gardening techniques. Second, we’ll practice guerilla gardening, transforming unproductive public green spaces into edible gardens overnight. And lastly, if Backyardeners is capable of sustaining its own operations, we will offer our services to low-income families for free as a form of food justice.

All in all, Backyardeners has the potential to do so much good in San Luis Obispo: employ aspiring gardeners, teach peers and clients about gardening and permaculture design, increase access to local, organic food, create a sustainable and resilient micro food system and connect people to where their food comes from.

And it’s risk-free! I already committed to tending all the gardens in the network during the initial grassroots phase, so there’s only room for expansion. Anyways, I’m really excited to get to work on my own garden in August and will keep you updated on Backyardeners’ progress!