Backyard Bounty business – 41 city properties growing food for Guelph

Backyard Bounty garden growing in their front lawn in Guelph, Ontario.

Backyard Bounty

Backyard Bounty is a unique community-based agriculture project. We cooperate with participating community members to convert their yard space into productive vegetable gardens. We currently have over 40 lawns being cultivated throughout Guelph!

Meet the Backyard Bounty Team

Robert Orland, the founder of Backyard Bounty was inspired to create Backyard Bounty in response to lawns. He saw that lawns are detrimental to the environment and that they are very resource dependant. Lawns are essentially monocultures and a desert for biodiversity.

Robert created Backyard Bounty and found Scott Williams, our head farmer. They discussed gardening as a solution to lawns and did a pilot project to see if it could be done. Scott has worked in farming for about nine years in Ontario, British Columbia and in Australia. He has also worked as a baker for several years.

Two years later, the head farmer, Scott is joined by Trisha Muldoon (certificate in organic agriculture from Linneas experienced organic grower) and Thomas Armitage (student in Organic Agriculture Program at U of G). They help Scott in the gardens with everything from seeding, transplating and propagating to harvesting and tying up tomato plants.

Julianna van Adrichem takes care of everything behind the scenes as the project coordinator, presenting to different businesses, organizing markets, and creating and distributing information on the business.

See their website here.