Our story

Our founder Johnny grew up half and half between the island of Maui on his grandparents' papaya and banana farm and Colorado Springs where his mother lived. He moved full-time to Colorado after graduating high school and experimented with jobs in food service and manufacturing before enlisting in the Navy to see the world.

Fate had other plans it seemed, as the Navy sent him to his first duty station right back where he started, on a warship based out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

When the ship was in homeport, he explored the many varied cuisines offered on the island of Oahu. When deployed, he sought out authentic dishes from each country he visited to compare to their popular forms in the US. From there he began to build an appreciation for the varied and colorful cuisines from around the Pacific Rim.

His next duty station was shore duty in Naples Italy, (the birthplace of pizza!), where his interest in food and sustainable food systems only deepened as he ate his way across Europe on his off-time. The theme that came through wherever he found great food was the same: delicious local ingredients.

He left the Navy to come home from overseas in 2017, and used the GI Bill to go to college, but ended up much too interested in running chainsaws in disaster zones and fighting wildfires to focus on school.

With wildland firefighting, he had almost hit the right job on the head. It was out in nature, and it was doing something important in support of a worthy cause, but before long his injuries made it clear that another career shift was needed. It was time to stop chasing danger for dopamine.

In 2020, he stumbled upon an article describing a program built by a fellow veteran in partnership with his non-profit Veterans to Farmers and the Denver Botanic Gardens to teach veterans the skills necessary to get into crop production. Johnny applied on the spot and was accepted a few weeks later.

After 21 weeks, he graduated with his mind overflowing with crop plans and integrated pest management practices, soil structure contributors and plant taxonomy. Equipped thus, he began planning Johnny's Green Gardens as a means of taking his lessons learned and using them to help his community build more robust food systems.

Local Supporting Local

Ours is a small business that seeks to support other local small businesses. By doing business with other local small businesses, we keep the revenue we earn in the local economy.

Ecologically mindful practices

We do what we can to safeguard the biodiversity in our own gardens, and will make recommendations toward the same end for yours. No pesticides or herbicides here.

We're not just building gardens...

We're building a network of food producers distributed throughout our neighborhoods to make it harder for market shocks to affect our access to food. Join your fellow local gardeners!

We take the hard part out of getting started

How many would-be gardeners never got to start their journey because they didn't have a space to do it? Too many! Let us take the preparation of your space out of the equation.