Grow With Us
Organic gardening education from seed to harvest. Learn how to grow, eat, and preserve food from your own backyard!
Our Programs
Since 2012, Build It Up has offered gardening education and installed over 150 new gardens in East TN. We offer support to backyard gardeners, market gardeners, and school and community gardens. Learn more about what we do by clicking below!
Backyard Gardeners Program
We take 30-40 families through a year of organic gardening education and support. Families recieve plants, seeds, tools, fertilizer and more to help grow healthy, fresh food right in their own backyards!
Market Gardeners Program
We encourage entreprenuership through agriculture and support market gardeners up to a half acre in size. We have a growers coop that sells to restaurants and a multi-farm CSA.
Consulting
Our gardening experts would love to help you design a backyard, community or school garden! We also do food forests, perennial fruit & nut trees, and native edible plants.
Over 150 Families Served
Wish your kids knew where their food comes from? Gardening provides so many opportunities for kids (and adults!) to learn about food, nature, and the joys of dirt under your fingernails! Learn more about our Backyard Gardens Program:
Grow Organic
We teach how to grow organically and in harmony with our ecosystem. Our workshops focus on gardening in ways that prevent pest and disease issues naturally without relying on chemical fertilizers and sprays.
Pounds of Food Grown
%
Organic
Families
Our Partners
Appalachian RC&D
BIU is a fiscally sponsored project of Appalachian RC&D. Learn more about their other great programs in the region!
Grow Appalachia
We are one of 21 Grow Appalachia partner sites. Click to learn more about GA and our sister programs.
Latest from the Blog
We try to feature blogs from each of our families 2-3 times a month. Read all about their gardening adventures this season:
Gardener Story: Kirstin Blackburn
Gardener Story: Kirstin BlackburnGardening always brings certain thoughts to my mind. Mostly, thoughts about my ability to survive in pioneering days. I always wonder if my vegetable patch would be enough to feed my family of six, or if we would succumb to starvation...
Gardener Story: Meme Ansbro
Gardener Story: Meme Ansbro Thyme to Turnip the Beet! My name is MeMe and I'm 34. I am from Northern California but I've lived in East Tennessee for 13 years on one and a half acres of farmland on the Greene County line. I am a stay at home mom and caregiver to a...
Gardener Story: Kelly Foster
Gardener Story: Kelly FosterThis was not our first year “doing a garden” but it was really our first time trying to systematically learn how to garden properly. I think, for our family, a lot of this was brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and fueled by a lot of time...