Most everyone feels a desire to improve the health of our environment, but when faced with our monumental environmental problems the task seems too large—understanding how to proceed can feel overwhelming. In recognition of this frustration, Backyard Abundance was founded to empower you with the knowledge and tools needed to understand how your contributions can directly improve the health of our local environment.

Backyard Abundance is an environmental education nonprofit that resides in Johnson County, Iowa.

Mission

Backyard Abundance helps people reconnect with nature by teaching ecological skills that enable the creation of beautiful, resilient communities and landscapes that model healthy ecosystems. Through research, education, demonstration, and collaboration, we empower people with the ability to cultivate regenerative landscapes that grow food, improve water and soil quality, and provide habitat.

Vision

We envision an educated and empowered community that has worked together to transform the entirety of our urban landscape into a lush, regenerative space. The local land meets our basic needs of survival by providing all residents with healthy food and natural materials that nourish our bodies and fill our spirit. We created this abundance of food and community by emulating nature’s regenerative patterns and principles thus eliminating the greed-driven fear of scarcity for future generations and ourselves. Within this flourishing ecosystem, all people foster a reverence for life, can readily adapt to and anticipate change, and understand how to create ecological abundance.

Economic stability is improved

• Food and other useful products are locally grown.
• Stable, resilient, self-maintaining, food ecosystems are created which are powered primarily by solar energy instead of distant and unreliable fossil fuels.

Environmental health is improved

• More wild areas are preserved due to the use of urban land for food growth.
• Urban water is cleaned and aquifers are replenished through improved soil and stormwater management.
• Less carbon dioxide and pollution is released due to the local planting, managing, harvesting, and shipping of food.
• The perceived need to maximize food production through industrialized mechanisms is lessened which decreases soil loss and reduces pollution caused by harmful chemicals.
• Energy is saved by composting organic waste locally rather than sending it to remote locations and then importing artificial fertilizer.
• The resiliency of local ecosystems is increased through plant, animal, and insect diversity.

A new paradigm is cultivated for the human participation in ecological systems

• By living and grazing within a healthy ecosystem, people realize that they are a part of nature, not separate from it.
• Through the immersion in a healthy ecosystem, ecological education opportunities are constant and our understanding of how to mimic nature’s processes steadily evolves.

People reconnect with the source of their survival

• The value of healthy soil and water increases due to first-hand observation of its relevance to our survival.
• Priorities shift from the pursuit of specious power, entertainment, and consumption to the creation and protection of healthy ecosystems. 

Healthy community is created

• People share a common bond through the cultivation of food and the creation of healthy ecosystems.
• Fulfillment is found by being with others and by being part of a larger whole.
• A lasting bond to the community is established through the creation of beautiful and diverse landscapes.
• Cooperation and assistance are promoted due to the widespread recognition that we are dependent on one another for long-term health and survival.
• Due to the ubiquity and abundance of urban food, sharing, rather than hoarding, becomes more prominent and the unconscious fear of scarcity is reduced.