Welcome to The Backyard Urban Farm Company, or BUFCO, your Organic Vegetable Garden Specialists – a one-stop shop for edible garden design, installation, planning, planting, maintenance, and consultation, serving the Greater Toronto Area.
We are on a mission is to inspire, educate, and empower urbanites to grow their own food and to help them reconnect with nature. We are also on a mission to develop and elevate committed, self-motivated nature-lovers who are building careers in the organic land care industry.
After three successful decades working in the motion picture industry, husband and wife team Marc Green and Arlene Hazzan Green co-founded The Backyard Urban Farm Company (BUFCO). The Company was established as a response to their growing awareness of, and resulting unease with their own contribution to climate change and their need to find a meaningful solution. 2022 marks BUFCO’s 13th anniversary.
Arlene Hazzan Green
Arlene (she/her) is an avid gardener and life-long learner who loves to share her knowledge. She is an Organic Master Gardener and Accredited Organic Land Care Practitioner with SOUL (Society for Organic Urban Landcare). Arlene is also an Emmy award winning television director and writer. (Photograph: Brianna-Roye)
Marc Green
VP Operations, Installations
Marc (he/him) is a meticulous project manager with a focus on customer service excellence and is driven by his desire to deliver product and services that meet or surpass the highest expectations. Marc is an avid outdoors enthusiast, loves wilderness camping, canoeing, and fishing. He also has a deep connection with music, spending his spare time playing guitar and piano. “Nature is medicine for the spirit. Music is medicine for the soul.”
After three successful decades working in the motion picture industry, husband and wife team Marc Green and Arlene Hazzan Green co-founded The Backyard Urban Farm Company (BUFCO). The Company was established as a response to their growing awareness of, and resulting unease with their own contribution to climate change and their need to find a meaningful solution. 2021 marks BUFCO’s 12th anniversary.
CEO; VP Gardening Division, Garden Designer
Arlene (she/her) is an avid gardener and life-long learner who loves to share her knowledge. She is an Organic Master Gardener and Accredited Organic Land Care Practitioner with SOUL (Society for Organic Urban Landcare). Arlene is also an Emmy award winning television director and writer.
VP Operations, Installations
Marc (he/him) is a meticulous project manager with a focus on customer service excellence and is driven by his desire to deliver product and services that meet or surpass the highest expectations. Marc is an avid outdoors enthusiast, loves wilderness camping, canoeing, and fishing. He also has a deep connection with music, spending his spare time playing guitar and piano. “Nature is medicine for the spirit. Music is medicine for the soul.”
CEO; VP Gardening Division, Garden Designer
Arlene (she/her) is an avid gardener and life-long learner who loves to share her knowledge. She is an Organic Master Gardener and Accredited Organic Land Care Practitioner with SOUL (Society for Organic Urban Landcare). Arlene is also an Emmy award winning television director and writer.
VP Operations, Installations
Marc (he/him) is a meticulous project manager with a focus on customer service excellence and is driven by his desire to deliver product and services that meet or surpass the highest expectations. Marc is an avid outdoors enthusiast, loves wilderness camping, canoeing, and fishing. He also has a deep connection with music, spending his spare time playing guitar and piano. “Nature is medicine for the spirit. Music is medicine for the soul.”
Debbie (she/her) studied engineering at University of Toronto and is an Organic Master Gardener. After volunteering at permaculture farms in Norway, she joined BUFCO to combine her technical skills with Arlene and Marc’s imagination to encourage mutually uplifting relationships between the earth and its inhabitants through food. She enjoys feeding garden scraps to her bunny, feeding bunny poo to her worms, then feeding worm poo back to her garden.
Julia (they/them) is an Organic Master Gardener who previously graduated from Queen’s University in printmaking and art history. Julia joined the BUFCO team after working at organic grocery stores and farmer’s markets, building rammed earth houses, and designing vegetable gardens. In their spare time, Julia can be found tending their own backyard veggie patch, playing music and cooking for friends.
Luisa (she/her) is a problem solver, who enjoys learning from life’s challenges. She studied both Architectural Technology and Permaculture Design. To merge her love for science and art she started working as an ornamental gardener in 2018. She’s joining BUFCO this year with the goal to extend the joy gardens give her beyond aesthetics, and help urbanites become more self-sufficient. When not covered in dirt you’ll find her dancing salsa, biking, and tattooing.
An Li (she/her) is a self-professed vegetable maniac, and loves cultivating edible plants as well as a host of indoor ones wherever she lives. The natural world has been a well of inspiration for her art work that continues to evolve as she delves deeper into the magical world of gardening. She is an avid home-cook, passionate about travel, and zipping around on her bike — always on the hunt for excellent carrots.
Grayson (he/him) is a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University and the Endeavour Centre’s Sustainable New Construction program. He has honed his craft in a number of different disciplines including organic gardening and natural building. Outside of BUFCO, you can find him tending his rooftop vegetable garden, Morris dancing in the streets, or exploring Toronto.
Bryce (he/him) has worked for many years in construction as a mason and a carpenter while side hustling as a multidisciplinary sport coach using sport and circus as a setting and catalyst to plant seeds in the minds of his clients about their own empowerment to navigate choice and challenge. “Abundance is all around us when we turn our minds from the fear of scarcity.”
Matt (he/him) spends every possible minute he can outdoors, when not outdoors he’s inside planning ways to be outdoors. Matt’s dream is to live off the land and be as self reliant as possible. He is always eager to learn something new.
Catherine (she/her) comes from a varied past far from her degree in English Literature. After 15 years in technology and 5 years of residential construction she happily found her way to accounting and settled in as BUFCO’s bookkeeper. Next to making sense of the numbers, she most loves learning about growing vegetables. She lives by the credo that life is better outside, her favourite place being the quiet solitude of nature either on a bike or in a canoe.
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Administration Manager;
Garden Manager & Designer
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Garden Supervisor
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Gardener Technician
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Gardener
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Operations Supervisor
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Installations Supervisor
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Installation Technician
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Administration Assistant
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Bookkeeper
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Urban Farm Dog
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Imagine | Nurture Nature | Sow Seeds of Positive Change | Plant and Play | Investigate & Innovate | Rest & Relax | Eat! |
Imagine picking an exquisitely mouth-watering tomato that you grew yourself in your own backyard. | Caring for plants and the earth stirs something deep within us, connects us to those who came before us and reminds us we are part of something larger than ourselves. | Gardens provide a wealth of joy, knowledge and opportunity that grows when these riches are shared among us all. | Dig in and get dirty! Gardens are gathering places where family, friends and neighbours can let loose and have fun. | Challenge and wonder awaits a curious gardener looking for solutions. | A quiet garden invites us to slow down, turn off, and tune in to nature’s rhythms. | Feast your eyes on abundant and heathy harvests to share with family and friends. |
We gratefully acknowledge the privilege we have to be working on land that is the traditional territory of many nations including, the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Huron Wendat peoples. Toronto is home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Mètis peoples from across Turtle Island. This sacred territory has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years and was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. We recognize the violence and loss of culture that makes our presence on this land possible. We also recognize our responsibility to confront the violence in which we are complicit and to work to dismantle the structures that perpetuate it.
We are actively working to recognize our own contributions to the systemic inequities that exist in our society. We are committed to doing the hard work required to uproot racism in all its forms and to amplify and support the voices of those who experience racism on a daily basis.
We strive every day, in every action, to nurture and maintain an equitable working environment; to provide a path forward to a more fair, prosperous and hopeful future for all, and to welcome people of all genders, races, religions, nationalities, cultures, sexual identities, languages, and abilities so they can feel comfortable, respected, and valued.
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