The only thing distinct about this residential area, located just 4 miles from downtown Phoenix, Arizona, are citrus trees, heavy with grapefruit and oranges. Many of the trunks have been painted white, and you can tell by the thickness that they are not new. One property here, mostly hidden behind a myrtle hedge is the Urban Farm , a private home and non-profit organization owned and operated by Greg Peterson.

The front yard boasts limequats, lemons, navel and trovita orange trees as well as apricot and cherry trees. In fact, his trim and modest front yard has 41 different fruit trees. But it doesn't look like an orchard. Rather, Greg keeps them pruned to dwarf sizes and even the beds of herbs and vegetable resemble perennials and borders rather than a farm. He even has a Screwbean mesquite and mills flour from this native plant.

Greg hopes will inspire other homeowners to find their own greenness, and there seems to be a groundswell for that these days. His tours of the homestead and classes now draw almost 70-100 people in a weekend. He teaches everything from how to plant and care for fruit trees to starting a chicken coop and creating gray water systems.
In fact, his backyard is testament to permaculture methods.

He lets his chickens do a lot of the weeding, dirt turning and fertilizing; his patio and stone wall are all repurposed materials, some being "urbanite" or broken up sidewalk.

He has an outdoor shower and the run off heads into three different drains and waters a variety of citrus, a peach and two guava trees. His kitchen sink drains out into a mulch pit, which waters a mini-orchard of dwarf fruit trees, and he has installed a large rainwater catchment tank that holds 700 gallons of rainwater for irrigation.
Greg got his start gardening young, and his own backyard.

"When we moved to a ¾ acre lot in central Phoenix, my mom said, 'the garden is going here, so dig.' I started planting fruit trees. Later, when I was a sophmore in high school, we had a big abundance of peaches, so a friend's mom taught me how to can."
I asked if that impressed the high school girls, and he just laughed and showed another section of his yard.

"Here I have the wild crops," he said. "garlic, Jerusalem artichokes, sage, horseradish, asparagus, lemon grass, and even a date palm."

Greg grows far too much food than he can use in this yard, and so he gives it away to friends and neighbors. "I strongly believe in giving away food. It was given to me, after all."

He has a mature orange tree in his backyard and explains, "This are used to be a citrus grove, and still gets flood irrigation. It was no accident or coincidence. This is another level of using water wisely."

When not on his urban farm, Greg Peterson is running his company, Your Guide to Green that helps people start orientating toward their own version of sustainable living.