Call For Sustainable Backyards

March 27, 2015

Call for Sustainable Backyards

The Sustainable Backyard Tour returns for the fifth year on Sunday, June 14th, 2015.

A free, grassroots, self-guided tour of residential yards (front and back!) throughout St. Louis city and county, the tour showcases a range of green living practices, including low-impact lawn care, composting and using recycled materials, organic gardening, chicken and beekeeping, gardening with native plants, water conservation, and renewable energy production to name a few.

If your backyard is green or you know someone whose yard is, we invite you to consider being a host on this year’s tour and putting your yard on show.

Your yard doesn’t need to be perfect, elaborate or even large, but it needs to be interesting and have something to demonstrate that the public can learn from. We ask that our hosts, as examples of sustainability and environmental education, commit to using compost and other sustainable best practices over synthetic shortcuts that poison the water table and kill the soil (and the birds and bees and ultimately, us.)

As a host, you agree to open your yard from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and interact with visitors—as many as 200 might visit your yard! We can’t know how many because attendees design their own routes and set their own pace, choosing from the addresses and descriptions in the tour booklet and on line.

More than 100 St. Louis families have welcomed tour goers over the past four years. As the tour grows, more hosts are needed to keep things interesting. “We have a few charter hosts, who’ve been generous enough to be on tour every year, but we always want new yards to show that these things can be done anywhere,” says tour founder Terry Winkelmann. “Practices like naturescaping, rain gardening and edible landscaping are spreading into every neighborhood and town—we want to find the trailblazers so we can shine a light on their efforts.”

While many host sites are single family backyards, organizers encourage residents of apartment buildings with community or rooftop gardens, and those with front yards to apply, too.  If you have worked hard to make your yard sustainable, consider being a host.

The deadline to register or suggest a potential host is May 1st.

Visit www.sustainablebackyardtour.com for details or click here to register your yard as a stop on the tour: http://goo.gl/forms/Bqzg5deHPE

This year’s community partners include: St. Louis Audubon Society, St. Louis Beekeepers, Grow Native!, Slow Food St. Louis, Gateway Greening, St. Louis Earth Day, Perennial, Webster Groves Herb Society, Missouri Mycological Society, Brightside St. Louis, St. Louis County Soil & Water Conservation District