Organizational History

Planting Justice emerges from the work Haleh and Gavin accomplished as co-founders of the Backyard Food Project (BFP), a for-profit business they started together in Summer of 2008. Similar to Planting Justice, BFP sought to address what we see as a major disconnect and shortcoming of the “food movement” and edible landscaping in general, which includes only those who can pay a high premium for these services, leaving most low-income and people of color behind.

In order to make permaculture relevant, accessible, and affordable for low-income urban residents, we put our grassroots organizing backgrounds to work, knocked on doors, and raised funds so that we could do this work with those who couldn’t afford thousands of dollars to landscape their yard and couldn't afford expensive organic produce from Whole Foods. We designed and developed nearly 40 permaculture gardens and three community gardens in our first year, held 15 free workshops, and organized five community work parties, and had a blast doing it. Now we are ready to radically expand the scope of this work, by inviting 21 other incredible leaders to join our board, and by organizing to develop many more highly productive and educational urban food forests that can provide jobs and help create a local and sustainable urban food system at the same time.