Our Programs
Since 2012, Build It Up has offered gardening education and installed over 200 new gardens in East Tennessee. We offer support to backyard gardeners, market gardeners, and school and community gardens.
Learn more about each service by clicking the links below.
Backyard Gardeners Program
We guide 30-40 families through a year of organic gardening education and support. Families receive plants, seeds, tools, fertilizer, and more to help grow healthy, fresh food right in their own backyards.
Market Gardeners Program
We foster entrepreneurship through agriculture and support market gardeners up to a half-acre in size. The MGP is on hiatus due to Covid-19, but we hope to relaunch soon!
Individual Consulting
Our gardening experts would love to help you design a backyard, community, or school garden! We also consult on food forests, perennial fruit and nut trees, and native edible plants.
Over 200 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 joy of dirt under your fingernails. Learn more about our Backyard Gardening Program:
Grow Organically
We teach how to grow organically and in harmony with our ecosystem. Our workshops focus on gardening in ways that prevent and disease issues naturally without relying on chemical fertilizers or sprays.
Pounds of Food Grown
%
Organic
Families
Latest from the blog:
We feature stories from our Build It Up participants as well as guides for when to be doing what in your garden like succession planting recommendations, seed starting, and more.
Gardener Story: Kirstin Blackburn
Gardening 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 and dysentery, like in the old...
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 niece and nephew. I’m pretty...
Gardener Story: Kelly Foster
This 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 in our home space and a...
Special Thanks To Our Partners
Build It Up is a fiscally sponsored project of the Appalachian Resource Conservation & Development Council.
Build It Up is one of 21 Grow Appalachia partner sites. Click below to learn more about Grow Appalachia and our sister programs.