Sharing Backyards: the gardening solution for urban dwellers!

Urban gar­den­ing can be chal­leng­ing. Lack of space or time can pre­vent peo­ple from hav­ing the gar­den they want and the healthy home grown pro­duce they need.  I live in an apart­ment with no yard space, if I wanted to gar­den I was lim­ited to what I could grow in con­tain­ers on my small bal­cony.  My sis­ter in law Rachel had an oppo­site prob­lem; she has a large yard but didn’t have time to main­tain a gar­den alone. We decided to gar­den together, split­ting the cost for seeds, tak­ing turns work­ing in the gar­den and shar­ing the pro­duce. We are in the begin­ning stages now and so far it’s been a blast! Def­i­nitely a win-win sit­u­a­tion! For peo­ple who don’t know some­one with gar­den space to share a project called Shar­ing Back­yards can help you out!

Shar­ing Back­yards is a joint project of Wasatch Com­mu­nity Gar­dens and Urban Vil­lage Coop­er­a­tive. Hope­ful gar­den­ers that are look­ing for land can pair up with those who have unused land with space for a gar­den and are look­ing for some­one to share it with. Once peo­ple find some­one they are inter­ested in shar­ing with they send them an email and go from there. It’s like Craigslist for urban gar­den­ers! The online map-based project has list­ings all over the Wasatch Front and Back though list­ings can be posted from any­where in Utah.

This project is a great way to bring neigh­bors together and help build strong com­mu­ni­ties, all while play­ing in the dirt! What could bond peo­ple more than choos­ing which vari­eties of toma­toes to plant and then shar­ing in a boun­ti­ful har­vest of sal­sas and sauces? Yard-sharers who par­tic­i­pated in past years have had great expe­ri­ences and there are many peo­ple with list­ings on the web­site look­ing for a match for the upcom­ing gar­den­ing sea­son. Visit http://wasatchgardens.org/garden/sharing-backyards to find more infor­ma­tion or to view the Shar­ing Back­yards map.

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