Boundless Landscapes
Boundless Landscapes aims to turn the world into a garden by converting lawns and underutilized commercial and community spaces into thriving food gardens to combat climate change and build more resilient communities. Rather than getting bogged down in dire predictions and doomsday thinking, we choose to be energized and make change. We imagine a more resilient world where much of our food comes from our neighborhoods (we call this “community embedded agriculture”), where the impacts of climate change have been reduced, the damage of the commodity food system has been healed, pesticide use in our neighborhoods has halted, young people are engaged as agents of change, our communities are more deeply connected, and local, nutritious, organically-grown food is accessible to all. We believe the seeds of that world lie today in the dormant potential of our very own backyards and businesses, and in the youth within our communities.
We piloted Boundless Landscapes in the Table Mesa neighborhood in Boulder in 2019—exploring and testing our model and building community around our broader vision. We farmed five residential yards and one larger church plot during the 2019 growing season with the help of a founding group of teen farmers. Each residential micro-farm consists of approximately 100 square feet and the church micro-farm is approximately 1,500 square feet. We returned one portion of the harvest to homeowners through a CSA-style model, the second portion was donated to food relief organizations, and the remainder was offered as affordable hyperlocal produce through a farmstand run by teen farmers and through a wholesale program. As we look toward the 2020 growing season, and with a successful pilot season under our belts, we are recruiting additional landowners who want to join us. We plan to build hundreds of household micro-farms and four larger “hubs” in collaboration with local businesses and community organizations in Boulder County that share our values and wish to join this movement.