VANCOUVER -- The landscaping installed by young entrepreneurs Katie Ralphs and Ruth Warren is a far cry from the patchy lawns and scruffy rhododendrons that are near ubiquitous in front yards across much of the city.

Lush caches of rainbow chard, peas, beans and lettuce dot Vancouver’s Riley Park neighbourhood between 18th and 29th avenues, in some places as many as two, three and even four yards on a block and a half dozen yards adjacent to a city bike lane.

Ralphs and Warren — the twentysomething proprietors of City Beet Farm — maintain 17 yard gardens all within ten blocks of each other, essential because they move themselves and their produce by bicycle.

“We have six yards just on Yukon and another four yards on 19th, so that makes it pretty easy to get around,” said Ralphs. “We can get to 10 yards in no more than 10 minutes.”

Similar businesses — Inner City Farms, Frisch Farms, Barefoot Farms and Yummy Yards to name a few — are converting dozens of Vancouver yards into micro-farms, paying the owners vegetables as rent.

Inner City Farms is cultivating 21 yards in three main clusters: near the PNE, around Main and 33rd Avenue, and in southwest Vancouver. Where one yard is planted, others quickly proliferate.

“It’s been really fascinating how it’s grown,” said Camil Dumont, head farmer for Inner City. “Those are just the locations where we got our first yards, but when people in the neighbourhood see what we are doing they get in touch or come and introduce themselves and want to get involved. So we are getting these clusters, which helps a lot with the logistics of farming.”

Outlying properties are typically planted with crops that require less maintenance and watering — garlic, squash or potatoes — requiring fewer visits per week, he said.

Most of the vegetables are sold to individuals and families through CSAs — Community Supported Agriculture — with a season-long subscription to weekly food baskets that cost from $330 to $460 for enough to supply two people, to around $700 for a family.

City Beet has 45 subscribers for its small box and 15 for the large, plus they run a weekly public market every Thursday at The Mighty Oak Neighbourhood Grocery Store on West 18th. Inner City has 40 family CSA subscribers, eight restaurant subscribers and provides each yard owner with a subscription. A rotating cast of volunteers who help mainly with harvesting are also paid in vegetables.

Yard farming is hitting the mainstream, at least in Vancouver, according to Jennifer van den Brink, who specializes in vegetable garden installations and garden maintenance for Yummy Yards.

“It started out that we were just doing conversions in yards that we were then going to farm, but a lot of people just wanted help starting their own vegetable garden,” she said. “So, most of what I do now is installations for people who want to grow their own food.”

Landscape architect Senga Lindsay says almost every project she is asked to design includes a request for edible components — from condominiums with community gardens and fruit trees, to residential developments with edible walls for fences.

“Five years ago it was a rare interest, but it’s very much the mainstream now,” she said. “People want to multi-task their space.”

Lindsay is working on a 12-home project in West Vancouver, which includes a chef’s kitchen garden in each yard and edible components woven into the permanent landscaping.

rshore@vancouversun.com

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