Boris Kerzner of Elkins Park launched a new company, Grow Our Food, in July. The vision: creating sustainable landscapes vis-à-vis gardens and orchards that feed entire households, native plantings which enhance biodiversity, and minimizing food waste by donating surpluses to good causes.
It’s a one-stop shop. Boris plants the trees, maintains them into adulthood, harvests their output, and leaves baskets of fresh fruit at your doorstep when he’s done. The rest gets donated to charity.
“Trees produce more than a family can eat, so what do you do with the leftovers? We pack it up and take it to a local food pantry. It’s feeding you and your family, and it’s also feeding people in need,” Boris said.
Grow Our Food has found interest in arboreal assets throughout Philadelphia, Montgomery County, and beyond. Boris has volunteered with Jenkintown Food Cupboard and plans to partner in some capacity with their services down the road.
“The seed of the idea came when I heard of someone who had a peach tree he wanted to remove. I thought I could give them another set of ideas in terms of what to do with that tree,” he said. “An important principle of any system is what to do with the surplus. Uneaten rotten fruit lying on the ground can be a maintenance concern. How can we redirect the surplus?”
Additional services include comprehensive, full-scale landscape site design and planning, native garden installations, and an electric lawn-mowing service, which could begin as early as this spring.
“We can take a whole property and think it through with you, and then we can install the whole thing,” he said.
The road to get to this point was windy. A software engineer for the last decade and a half, Boris had an itch to evolve his career path, and found himself in New York City taking a class called Green Medicine. It was through that class that he had his first exposure to herbal medicine, and a lightbulb went on.
“That class ignited a deeper connection with plants. I had gardens for a few years, and I kept wondering how I could turn that line of work into a career,” Boris said.
He spent a year of intensive study with the Conway School’s Sustainable Landscape Design & Planning program in Massachusetts, and used his deepened understanding of natural systems to launch Grow Your Food this summer.
“So far I’ve installed four fruit trees on a residential property in Wyncote, I put in 50 feet of berries for a resident in Abington, I put two fruit trees and 25 feet of berries at a Cheltenham daycare, and I’ve done design work for a camp in the Poconos,” Boris said. “My overall approach is very tailored to sustainable design. I do large rain barrels, too. My company runs the gamut of what you’d expect someone like me to do.”
In his free time, Boris maintains the varied foodscape around his house: trees and shrubs as familiar as apples, plums, and cherries, and as exotic as paw-paws, elderberries, and Aronias.
To the unseasoned gardener, fall may seem like a time to put down the shovel and spade. For Boris, these months are a ripe opportunity for planting.
“The fall is a great time to plant because your plants get two cool seasons before the heat of the summer. It helps take the stress off of young plants. You can plant even up until December. That extra time allows plants to put out more root mass by the time the searing summer sun hits them,” he said. “It lets the plants get acclimated.”
If you’ve got a hankering for fresh fruit at your doorstep and professionally maintained trees in your backyard, give Boris a call.
“The suburbs are uniquely suited for growing and sharing food. There is lots of land for growing and a sufficient density of people for sharing. There is autonomy, but also community,” Boris said.
For more on Grow Our Food’s services, vision, and portfolio samples, you can visit their website.
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