Gleanr is about empowering community focused urban agriculture.

Our Story

Long conversations are good. They can take us to unexpected places. Best of all they can lead to new ideas and deeper understandings. And often they can reveal things that were there all the time but for whatever reason remained suppressed. Long conversations are great ‘un-concealers’.

This is how Gleanr’s co-founders, Peter and JD, realised that when they spoke over the years about urban food growing, environment, health, community, social capital, resilience, collaboration, urban futures, they in fact spoke of things that were all connected at a deeper level. This is what Gleanr embodies; a deep synthesis of ideas that matter.

Over the years it became clear that urban food growing forms a unique currency that unites shared desires to see thriving communities, safer environments for children to grow and play in, healthier biodiversity, more resilient people, better soil, and more nutritious food. It is also a currency that does not demand excessive amounts of energy on top of already busy lives.

Developed by urban food growers and collaborators, Gleanr’s story originated on the edges of inner Melbourne and in the lush and fertile fields of Europe. This is where our co-founders first learnt that seeds seek to be loved, soil is more than soil, and that getting your hands dirty is about as satisfying as it can get. Learning to grow vegetables slowly transcended into a way of looking at life in general. This experience has now been translated into Gleanr.

“We have grown food since we were children. Working alongside our parents - learning by doing. As adults our careers took us in many directions and to many parts of the world. Over the past 10-15 years, we realised that food grown in backyards, small patches of land, or even balconies, has come to signify something more – good health, resilience, and a commonness of relationships, caring and wellbeing.”

The story of Gleanr evolved slowly until it found its current form - a collaborative community platform for urban food growing communities. Gleanr is passionate about developing a sense of community collaboration and learning. There are many things that can be accomplished in the process of growing one’s own food - reducing food waste and/or reducing or completely avoiding harmful chemicals can have a small impact in your local garden but generate a major difference across communities.

From time to time, we all need help from others. From its very inception Gleanr has been designed to foster a culture of collaboration. It has been designed to be a co-operative space helping people produce (glean, that is) the best results from their gardens by using our tools and communicating with other urban food growers.

Gleanr is an enabler for urban food enthusiasts. Our platform respects people’s privacy, wishing only for its members to connect and collaborate, learn from each other, and be part of something bigger.

Gleanr is a vision. We see the future as being led by people who make lives better through small acts of growing and sharing food with family, friends, neighbours and travellers from afar.

And finally, Gleanr is an invitation to be part of our story’s future - a future that we hope will be shaped by the community in which it grows.

Our message is ‘get earthy’ - get earthy with friends and family, celebrate relationships, create new meanings, grow food, and have fun sharing.

Peter and JD
Co-founders

About

Our Story

Inside Gleanr

Balancing act: how urban landscaping, biodiversity, urban agriculture and communities converge

Unlocking potential: urban agriculture and governance

Are you lonely? Growing vegetables with someone may be all it takes to make a little difference.