Aiden is a first time home buyer and has been living in his house for about three years. He works a full time job and takes frequent business trips. He has considered starting a garden in the past but feels he just doesn’t have the time a garden would require. One day he stumbles upon a Sharing Backyards site and discovers one of his condo living neighbors, Krista, is looking for a place to garden and offers to share produce in exchange. 

The two meet, get along well, and decide to give Sharing Backyards a try. Aiden has a water line and garden tools Krista can use. Together they discuss how large the garden will be, which vegetables to grow and the times of day Krista can come over and spend in the garden. They also decide Aiden will pitch in for the cost of seeds and seedlings, help with weeding when he can, and have about 1/3^rd of the produce.

Linda and Miguel’s Backyard Garden

Linda and Miguel are an elderly couple who have been living in their home for 50 years. Once passionate gardeners, they are now finding it difficult to manage their large garden by themselves.

Jeff and Joe are in their late 20’s and live in an apartment complex next door. There is a little grass surrounding their building but gardening is not allowed and the two wish they could grow their own food.

The four are acquaintances and one day when Jeff and Joe are admiring Linda and Miguel’s garden they strike up a conversation about the difficulty the couple are having keeping up with it. What results is an agreement for Jeff and Joe to install a drip line in the garden and help pull weeds in return for veggies. 

Betina’s Fruit Trees

Betina has 3 fruit trees in her yard and while she loves having fresh apples, cherries and apricots all summer long, the trees produced far more than she could eat. Maintenance of the trees also became a bit overwhelming for her at times. So, she created a listing on a Sharing Backyards site for help with her trees in exchange for fruit.

She received 2 responses to her listing. One was from a family who lived in her neighborhood, the Garcia’s, and the other was from a man, Tim, who lived across town but passed through her neighborhood each week on his way to see his parents who lived near by.

Soon arrangements were made for the Garcia’s to come by every Wednesday evening and for Tim to come by early Sunday mornings to pick 2 to 3 buckets worth of fruit and help clean up fallen, rotting fruit on the ground. 

Ali’s Empty Lot

Ali lives and works downtown and recently inherited an empty 1 acre lot from his grandfather who was in the real estate business. Instead of selling or developing the land, Ali decides to turn it into a small urban farm. He knows a little about gardening and farming, but knows he’ll need a lot of help and decides to list his idea on his city’s Sharing Backyards site and see if he gets any interest.

He gets several responses from a wide array of individuals who live in the city. Among them is a professor from the local University’s agriculture program, 2 college students interested in advancing local food production, a family of Burmese refugees who used to run a farm in Burma, an avid gardener, and a couple other people without much food growing experience but a desire to learn and help out.

Ali organizes a meeting with some of the respondents and they begin to discuss the possibilities for his piece of land. Over the next year, this group of a dozen community members gets the urban garden going with vegetable crops, a few fruit trees, and a couple dozen chickens.