Founded in 2006, Backyard Abundance is a leading educational nonprofit residing in Johnson County, Iowa.

Through hundreds of classes, presentations, tours and consultations, we’ve helped thousands of people create and experience environmentally-beneficial landscapes that grow nourishing food, beautiful wildlife habitat and healthy people.

Mission

Backyard Abundance helps people deeply connect to the natural world and feel mentally, physically and spiritually healthy by nurturing resilience within themselves and our local ecosystems.

We accomplish this mission by working with nature’s powers of growth and transformation, offering experiential, restorative education and developing spaces where all beings feel safe, held and interconnected.

Vision

We envision the growth of resilient, caring and safe communities where everyone has easy and equal access to nurturing spaces to connect, grow, heal and learn.

These nourishing, abundant landscapes grow food and materials, cleanse water and prevent erosion, purify air and regulate greenhouse gases, provide wildlife habitat and encourage biodiversity, cycle nutrients and build soil.

People readily integrate their innate skills and knowledge into regenerative ecosystem processes to foster harmony, diversity and stability. Emotional, physical and spiritual needs are simultaneously nurtured, helping everyone feel whole and interconnected.

Personal

Everyone wants to feel connected to their community and improve the health of the environment, but when faced with monumental societal and environmental challenges, the task seems too large and understanding how to proceed can feel overwhelming.

In addition, most people long to regain the immersive relationship they had with nature as a child, to feel her unconditional love, delight in the wild aliveness of interacting with kindred species, and experience the timeless wonder that now only comes in fleeting moments.

In recognition of this anxiety and disconnection, Backyard Abundance was founded to help align everyone’s unique interests and gifts with the rhythms of nature, to grow personal wellbeing while harmoniously improving the health of our local environment. Along the journey, we will realize that we are Earth expressed in human form, and tending our internal garden is required in order to tend the wider world.

Unique

No other Iowa organization teaches people how to take small steps that transform the outdoors into spaces that demonstrate our ability to thrive in harmony with nature.

Deep and lasting satisfaction comes from the daily observation of personally-made environmental improvements. This personal connection with a landscape evokes a strong desire to share actions and knowledge, quickly spreading this mission in a positive, grassroots way.