Backyard University offers edible and ornamental gardening classes for all. We believe that getting your hands dirty, whether your space to grow is big or small, can give everyone the opportunity to cultivate a joyful connection with nature and to access abundance. Join us to learn the sustainable gardening practices that empower you to nurture yourself, the land, and our community.
Questions? Email backyarduniversitypdx@gmail.com
Thanks to PNW’s mild maritime climate, you can enjoy fresh produce from your vegetable garden nearly all year round. Take advantage of this by planting a fall garden in midsummer. Just as summer crops start to wind down, cool season favorites like carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, will reach their peak. In this class you will learn everything you need to succeed with your fall vegetable garden, including proper planting timing, variety selection, fertilizing, pest and disease management, and season extension techniques, from co-teachers Jessica and Rachel in a SE Portland backyard. You’ll have the opportunity to explore a dynamic landscape that includes a raised bed vegetable garden, fruit trees, drought tolerant plantings, and even a beehive.
You’ll take home a collection of vegetable seedlings well suited for fall harvest, so you can get started planting your garden right away.
Address for location, a residence in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood, will be provided upon registration.
This class will be held outside. Please dress appropriately for summer weather. Refreshments will be provided.
About the instructors:
In 2009, Jessica Wood thought it would be fun to try growing her own strawberries and tomatoes, so she got a community garden plot and decided to take a couple classes from a local independent garden center. Today, she's a full-fledged horticultural professional who works at wholesale specialty conifer and Japanese maple nursery in Boring, OR, and earned a landscape design degree. She founded Backyard University to share her passion for home gardening and her appreciation for the wonder that plants and natural ecosystems never cease to inspire. She still calls her community garden plot home and in her free time, you'll find her weeding cucumbers and harvesting strawflowers.
Rachel Lindsay knows the botanical name of that one cool flower that you can't remember and she can tell you how to grow it too. And she can tell you how to raise chickens, prune fruit trees, keep bees, tame feral cats, sew, can, code, create a website, or knit socks. This maker and gardener tends a garden bursting with every kind of collector's plant but she's also traveled all over the world. No one waters less in summer or grows sweeter mulberries. Someday, she and her partner hope to move to the San Juan Islands, where they will continue keeping cats, collecting sewing machines, and of course, gardening.
Free to all!
Reservations and sign-up are not required, but requested for anonymous grant reporting statistics.
Attendance for the entire workshop is recommended.
About the instructor:
Jessica Wood, founder of Backyard University, got a community garden plot in 2009 and took some vegetable gardening classes at a local independent garden center while on leave from college. Today, she's a full fledged horticultural professional who works at Iseli, a wholesale specialty conifer and Japanese maple nursery in Boring, OR, and earned a landscape design degree. She loves to teach and share her passion for growing her own food and her appreciation for the wonder that plants and natural ecosystems never cease to inspire. She believes that nurturing a connection with plants grounds us within ourselves and empowers us to cultivate meaningful community relationships and resources. She still calls her community garden plot home and in her free time, you'll find her weeding cucumbers and harvesting strawflowers.
Start a riot of diversity with your own handmade native wildflower seed bombs!! Have you been plotting to reestablish wildlife habitat in the city? Do you have the itch to bring back native flora to abandoned spaces? Come join us for a workshop where we can team up to equip ourselves with radical tools for regenerating urban biodiversity.
In this class, we will talk about wildflower ecology and demonstrate how to create your own wildflower filled seed bombs, with "guerrilla habitat restoration" in mind.
All resources will be provided. We will provide empty egg cartons for seed ball storage & drying, but please bring your own empty egg cartons if you have any.
Once dried, they are ready for "sowing," or they make a great gift that keeps on giving!
Included with the class: Clay, worm castings, and native wildflower seeds to make 40-60 seed bombs to take home.
This is a kid-friendly class! All children must be accompanied by an adult.
About the instructor:
Jessica Wood, founder of Backyard University, got a community garden plot in 2009 and took some vegetable gardening classes at a local independent garden center while on leave from college. Today, she's a full fledged horticultural professional who works at Iseli, a wholesale specialty conifer and Japanese maple nursery in Boring, OR, and earned a landscape design degree. She loves to teach and share her passion for growing her own food and her appreciation for the wonder that plants and natural ecosystems never cease to inspire. She believes that nurturing a connection with plants grounds us within ourselves and empowers us to cultivate meaningful community relationships and resources. She still calls her community garden plot home and in her free time, you'll find her weeding cucumbers and harvesting strawflowers.
Join Brad Kay in his backyard, which he’s transformed over the last three years from a blank slate to a dynamic landscape full of food and flowers using free wood chips from ChipDrop. He will take you through the process of designing a low maintenance and drought tolerant garden using wood chips, starting with the best way to approach the steaming mountain of mulch dropped in your driveway all the way through to strategies to build the garden of your dreams. Learn how to utilize this amazing free resource to promote healthy soil, create pollinator habitat, and to deter weeds and disease.
This class takes place at a private residence in the Montavilla neighborhood. The address will be provided upon registration.
We will meet outside, so please dress appropriately. If it is sunny, we will gather in the backyard. If it is raining, instruction will move to an unheated workshop that opens out into the garden.
About the instructor:
Brad is a lifelong gardener and horticultural hobbyist originally from Australia. After leaving corporate life behind in 2017, he's pursued his passion for plants. He founded a landscape design company and worked at a leading local retail nursery, through which he has developed a practical working knowledge of design, plant selection, planting fundamentals, and garden maintenance. He has a particular interest in natural gardening methods, drought tolerant and low design, creating habitat for insects and pollinators, and especially, in using wood chips. His carefully curated, exuberant garden in Montavilla speaks to his thoughtful attention to detail and his commitment to in his creation of a layered landscape that invites plant, animal, and insect diversity on as many levels as possible.
Join Rachel Tanzer to learn the basics of native plant propagation, with a focus on Willamette Valley native shrubs and trees. We will gather outdoors (under cover, if raining) for a brief presentation followed by a hands-on workshop where we will find native plants in the field and learn how to propagate from cuttings. Participants will collect cuttings from several kinds of trees and shrubs and pot them up.
When registering for this event, please indicate if you will be able to bring pruners or if you need a pair to be provided for you. Expect to be out in the rain when gathering cuttings and dress accordingly.
About the instructor:
Rachel Tanzer is an Assistant Ecological Designer at Symbiop Landscaping and specializes in restoring habitat and creating climate resilient landscapes that integrate native plants and edible plants. Check out her portfolio here. When she's not outside in the field, she's outside hiking with her dogs or running.
After summer is over and the last tomatoes have been harvested, it's time to put your vegetable garden to bed for the winter. Properly preparing your beds now lays the foundation for ease and abundance next spring. Join co-teachers Rachel and Jessica to discuss creative composting methods, pH amendment, and using cover crops to suppress weeds and improve the health and structure of your soil. You’ll learn how to choose the ideal cover crops for your beds based on their unique nutrient needs and be able to incorporate them into your yearly crop rotation plan. We will also talk about our favorite fall planted vegetable, garlic! Explore Rachel’s home garden that combines fruit trees and raised beds with an extraordinary collection of drought tolerant ornamentals and celebrate the harvest with other plant nerds.
You'll leave with a sampler of cover crop seeds and the knowledge of how to use them!
This class will be held at a private residence in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood. Address will be provided upon registration.
This class will be held outside. Please dress appropriately. If it does rain, we will meet inside and make forays out to the garden for demonstrations.
About the instructors:
Jessica Wood, founder of Backyard University, got a community garden plot in 2009 and took some vegetable gardening classes at a local independent garden center while on leave from college. Today, she's a full fledged horticultural professional who works at Iseli, a wholesale specialty conifer and Japanese maple nursery in Boring, OR, and earned a landscape design degree. She loves to teach and share her passion for growing her own food and her appreciation for the wonder that plants and natural ecosystems never cease to inspire. She believes that nurturing a connection with plants grounds us within ourselves and empowers us to cultivate meaningful community relationships and resources. She still calls her community garden plot home and in her free time, you'll find her weeding cucumbers and harvesting strawflowers.
Rachel Lindsay knows the botanical name of that one cool flower that you can't remember and she can tell you how to grow it too. And she can tell you how to raise chickens, prune fruit trees, keep bees, tame feral cats, sew, can, code, create a website, or knit socks. This maker and gardener tends a garden bursting with every kind of collector's plant but she's also traveled all over the world. No one waters less in summer or grows sweeter mulberries. Someday, she and her partner hope to move to the San Juan Islands, where they will continue keeping cats, collecting sewing machines, and of course, gardening.