About Us

Green City Growers
Farm fresh food right from your yard

Your Subtitle text

About Us

Jessie Banhazl is the Managing Director, Owner, and Co-Founder of Green City Growers. She has a Bachelor's Degree from Smith College in Northampton, MA, and is a Boston-area native. After graduating, she moved to New York city and began a career in reality television production. She has worked for a variety of TV shows, including "Wife Swap", "The Hills", "Throwdown with Bobby Flay" and other Food Network productions. Disillusioned with the entertainment industry, she moved back to Boston to run Green City Growers, re-awakening her passion for food, farming, and sustainability. Jessie has extensive experience in communications, management, production, and community issues. She is involved with the Local Food movement, and is passionate about cooking with fresh ingredients. Since co- founding the company in 2008, Jessie has lead GCG through a successful season, building and maintaining over 120 vegetable gardens in 2009, and forming a partnership with Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare to promote wellness and health through growing food at home. Jessie can be found wearing multiple hats daily, and is often dirt-covered and farming in the morning, running the business in the afternoon, and speaking at public forums about local food systems in the evening.

Anne Lemay Hurley is the Director of Operations. Anne is a Massachusetts native with a background in urban- sociology with a Metropolitan Studies degree from New York University. While at NYU, she pursued an independent study at EARTH University for Sustainable Agriculture in

Costa Rica

, sparking her interest in farming and waste-management. Since graduation, she has spent time traveling and honing her practical skills in the areas of Permaculture Design in Texas, Carpentry in Vermont, and Natural Building in

Thailand

. She is passionate about composting and knowing why things work the way they do. Anne is excited to be working with Green City Growers to be able to explore designs that allow backyard farming to be successful and accessible.

Ben Bois is our Horticultural Supervisor. He has been working as an independent gardener for over 10 years. He worked at Mahoney's Garden Center in Cambridge for many years (R.I.P the Cambridge location), as well as spending time working at Simple Gifts Farm in North Amherst. He graduated from Hampshire College, where he studied sustainable agriculture, ecology, permaculture, and organic pest-management. Ben also studied soil science, botany, organic farming, and gardening at the Stockbridge school at Umass. Ben is excited to join the Green City Growers team and will be supervising the quality of plant life in your raised-bed, as well as managing our seedlings and organic pest/fungal management.

Adrianne Schaefer is our Sales Manager. She has a Multidisciplinary Degree in Politics and Economics of Developing Nations from University of Masachusetts-Dartmouth. While there, she worked with some awesome students and staff on social justice and green initiatives including fair trade, local food, and energy saving campaigns on campus. There she learned that she loves event planning, coordinating and doing outreach! Before moving to Boston she was a consultant at MA Farm to School project in Amherst, connecting farms and schools across the state of MA, and coordinated workshops for NOFA's Regional Sustainability Conference. She is now also the Farmers Market Manager for the Union Square Farmers market on Saturdays. She is fired up about local food, radical urban sustainability, green building, and projects that improve neighborhoods socially, economically and environmentally. She can't wait to help people grow food in their backyards!

Benjamin Crouch, AOLCP is a landscape contractor who specializes in edible and native plants. His runs his own business focused on creating and maintaining sustainable residential landscapes in an urban context. He is also a workshop instructor in the topic of home orcharding for the Arnold Arboretum, Tower Hill Botanical Society, Ecological Landscapers Association, EarthWorks, and Boston Natural Areas Network. Previously, he spent 7 years with EarthWorks as an associate and then director of their Urban Orchards program. Ben has partnered with Green City Growers to manage the design and installation of fruit trees and bushes for our clients.

If you are interested in any of Ben's landscaping or Fruit services, email GCG to schedule a consultation.

Gabriel Erde-Cohen is the Co-Founder of Green City Growers. A Boston native, Gabe studied farming and sustainable design at Hampshire College in Western MA. He ventured on to study both Rural and Urban food growing in San Francisco, Wyoming, Colorado, and Scotland. Gabe was inspired to pursue Urban farming full time while on the Common Vision Fruit Tree Planting Tour, where he participated in planting one thousand fruit trees in urban areas around California. Gabe has taught sustainability in Napa City, CA and Roxbury, MA. He has worked as a rancher, a farmer, an d an educator.

2010 Farming Crew Bios Coming Soon!