Cultivating a Backyard Buffet

Eat Your Yard

Eat Your Yard, a local company run by green thumb Tess Frawley, aims to help people create their own edible gardens, for either their own or their community's consumption, assisting at all points of garden creation from consultation to maintenance, including landscaping services and educational workshops.

The first seeds of the edible landscaping company Eat Your Yard were sown when owner Tess Frawley witnessed the transformation of a backyard into a productive 7-acre permaculture farm. "It was an old plantation that a couple had renovated and they were trying to bolster the community atmosphere in this very, very small rural town in Georgia." Frawley explains.

The backyard farm was complete with chicken coops, hoop houses, and raised beds, all in the middle of the small city of Sparta, Georgia.

Then, Frawley caught wind of Love and Carrots, a company in Washington D.C. that installed edible home gardens and considered bringing a similar concept to her hometown of Erie. "Instead of having all the food grown around the outskirts of the city and farmland, why couldn't we just grow more of it here in town?"

Frawley also recognizes the need to increase food access in Erie. "A lot of our citizens in Erie live in food deserts and live in a zip code that is the most impoverished in the nation." Frawley says. "I would love for everybody to have enough food so that they can then, in terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, reach the next level of fulfillment actualization."

Following seasonal jobs at vegetable farms and a nine-week business course at Blasco Library in the spring of 2020, Eat Your Yard transformed from an idea into a business. The company assists with each step of creating an edible garden, from consultation to maintenance. Frawley also offers other landscaping services as well as educational workshops for those interested in learning how to grow and maintain a garden.

Eat Your Yard plans to host five workshops this year, following each step of planning a garden through design, installation, planting, and management. "I like to see it as a progression. People can participate in one class or all, or they can just pick up bits and pieces, or perhaps they have some experience already," Frawley says.

The first Eat Your Yard workshop this year will occur on Saturday, March 9 at 10/20 Collective and will focus on the design phase of building a garden, along with an opportunity for seed swapping and a vendor market.

One of Frawley's favorite garden installations took place at 10/20 Collective last fall, when she collaborated with school-age children from the Inner-City Neighborhood Art House to build a garden for the event space. Frawley works as an urban agriculture educator at the Art House, teaching an after-school program that meets three times a week.

"Some of the classes are geared toward gardening, some are geared toward using grown produce in fresh meals." Frawley explains. "Then some are more general neighborhood beautification, or looking at watersheds, or just being nature detectives and trying to get outside."

When Frawley took two groups of children, one younger and one older, from the Art House across the street to 10/20 Collective, they were eager to begin building the garden.

"I was stunned by how excited these kids were to build a garden space." Frawley says. "They were all running around, hauling compost, shoveling it into wheelbarrows, and I just love the energy of it because usually I'm doing that by myself and it can be rather tedious."

After the garden was built, an older group of children planted garlic bulbs to come up this spring.

"It just felt nice to get a start. You know, things take time and even the small steps, they're going to amount to something. So, it's just really nice to have another connection in that community right there." Frawley says, reflecting on the experience.

For those wanting to grow something for the first time in their yard, or try their hand at growing something new, Frawley recommends potatoes or kale. "Potatoes are an easy way to start and that's a staple food for a lot of people, whether they realize it or not," Frawley says. "Most people are probably eating potato chips or French fries on the regular, myself included."

However, Frawley explains that not everyone can grow every vegetable in their yard due to lack of space or environmental factors, but that sharing produce with neighbors can provide an opportunity for connecting as a community.

"It's more about supporting each other as a whole community than everybody individually trying to grow everything that they need." Frawley says. "I think that's an important piece that I've been learning over the years. It's full of lessons, out in the garden."

For more information on Eat Your Yard including services, workshops, and pricing, visit eatyouryarderie.com

Alana Sabol can often be found snuggling her cats or baking at Herb and Honey on the weekends. She can be reached at alanacsabol@gmail.com.