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About Us

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 created to empower you with the knowledge and tools needed to understand how your contributions can directly improve our environment.

Started
Summer 2006

• We are residents concerned about the deteriorating health of our environment
• Our focus is the Iowa City area, but our thoughts are global
• We envision a community that actually improves our environment because of our presence
• We have a passion for demonstrating how small, focused ecological changes that work in harmony with nature can provide abundance for ourselves, our community, and our environment

If you share these same values, then you are a member of Backyard Abundance.

Mission
Backyard Abundance helps residents understand how to help our environment by making ecological improvements to their yards.

• Create environmentally-beneficial yards that are equally valuable to humans, wildlife, insects and plants
• Create community by establishing connections between people and local environmental organizations

• Help people form a healthy relationship with their local environment
• Help make Iowa City a self-reliant and abundant community

• Hold free public events featuring yards that are consciously designed to improve the health of our environment
• Form partnerships with local environmental organizations to demonstrate and teach how to implement environmentally-beneficial features in yards

Sustainability and Our Relationship with the Environment
Permanent solutions to our environmental problems continue to elude us because we approach those problems incorrectly. The environment is unhealthy because the way we live makes it unhealthy. Therefore, to restore the health of our environment, we must change the way we live; that is, we must view our problems as cultural, not environmental. This new approach begins by taking a long-term view of how our actions can help keep our local environment healthy.

To help anything in the world we must first understand that thing we are trying to help. The goals of Backyard Abundance attempt to meet this need. Your yard--or any green space--is part of our environment. Understanding our environment is as simple as stepping into that green space, observing what is happening, and then using it as a canvas for experimentation and understanding.

A rain garden is a classic example. If all you did was create a rain garden in your yard for aesthetic reasons, your mindset about the environment would change very little. But if you are able to see the connections between your rain garden and how it cleans the water, reduces undercutting in our urban streams, and creates habitat and food for wildlife, then your mindset about how to help the environment begins to shift. You begin to see how you can live in harmony with the natural world, and it is not in the context of sacrifice, it is in the context of abundance.

We are able to go beyond "sustainability" by changing the way we live to be congruent with nature's rules. Nature never creates pollution, it is obsessed with creating diversity, and everything is cyclical--endless growth is non-existent. When we too reuse all waste, encourage diversity in our community, and slow or halt constant growth, we are emulating just a few of the rules nature has perfected over four billion years to heal itself and create abundance. Is there really a better model to follow?

We have a connection--a relationship--with everything in our environment whether or not we consciously acknowledge it. In order to continue relentlessly abusing our environment, we must emotionally distance ourselves from it--we must objectify it as a "thing" that serves us. We are unable to form a healthy, non-abusive relationship with our environment because of our exploitation of it--true closeness and exploitation are mutually exclusive. But as we learn more about our local environment, our relationship with it will naturally deepen and become healthy. We will finally halt the abuse and learn to care for and rejuvenate it.

Changing the Culture
Backyard Abundance represents one piece of a puzzle that works to make Iowa City a self-reliant, resilient, and abundant community. It helps people learn how to emulate nature's processes to create abundance for ourselves, our community, and all life on the planet. With this understanding we begin to see where we fit in nature's overall scheme and subsequently our perception of the environment starts to change. Yard by yard, people's perceptions and actions change so that our community works in harmony with the natural world. Our culture then shifts from the mindset of just trying to do less harm, to an understanding that we can create beauty and overflowing abundance in our local environment.