Welcome to Wilson Alvarez and Natasha Herr's mansion.

All three rooms of it.

The furniture came from the trash. The bed is nothing more than a nest of blankets on the floor.

But it sure beats weathering an upstate New York winter in an 8-by-10-foot wall tent.

Alvarez and Herr, married two years, are serious about sustainable living, growing much of their own food in a community garden and their tiny North Concord Street apartment, the largest space they've ever shared.

Their mutual devotion to an environmentally friendly lifestyle — and each other — began on a cross-country odyssey in 2003.

Now Alvarez, 27, and Herr, 26, have settled back home, hoping to affordably educate others on growing their own food, no matter how small or shady the space.

Alvarez and Herr, who own Homegrown Edible Landscaping Co., design, plant and tend gardens, often in postage-stamp-sized city yards.

The couple's own lack of a yard forces them to grow food indoors, from just-sprouted heirloom tomatoes to a damp log that produces a half-pound of shiitake mushrooms every two months.

"We have learned how to use the tools in the toolbox," Herr says. "We want to teach others how to use them."

But first they have to squelch Americans' fascination with lush, rolling lawns.

All that beautiful grass could be a garden that produces food — an approach they call equally eco-friendly, healthy and inexpensive.

A yard, Herr says, is a terrible thing to waste.

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Alvarez and Herr met while working in the cafe at the Lancaster Borders.

Alvarez, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., graduated from Manheim Township. Herr is a Lampeter-Strasburg graduate. Both attended Millersville University at the time, studying to become teachers.

They were just getting to know each other when Alvarez mentioned his desire to drive across the country.

Herr volunteered to go with him.

Soon they were sharing a three-month trek in an old Subaru station wagon, armed with $2,000 and a tent.

They've been together ever since.

The journey also triggered an environmental awakening. (Alvarez had a little more previous experience with environmental issues, including an arrest at a Washington, D.C., protest.)

Alvarez and Herr toured sustainable farms and picked up other people's trash in national parks.

They saw a public bike-sharing program in Austin, Texas, and an urban "forest" of edible trees and shrubs right in the middle of Asheville, N.C.

After the trip, Alvarez and Herr adopted a three-year-long nomadic lifestyle, parking an old minivan-turned-camper everywhere from Colorado to North Carolina.

In time, they gave up searching for the "perfect" environmentally evolved place to live and came home.

"This place is where our families live, where we grew up," Herr says. "We love it so much."

Why not work for change here?

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Alvarez and Herr's vision recalls World War II victory gardens, when Americans grew food right in their own backyards.

The couple learned everything they know about gardening and the environment through reading, travel and experience.

Alvarez and Herr grow everything from peanuts to oats in a 40-by-40-foot plot at Lancaster County Park.

Alvarez — who wears a button that says "Food Not Lawns" and has the words "hunter" and "gatherer" tattooed on his hands — also hunts with his own homemade wooden bows and arrows.

On their wedding day, Alvarez and Herr exchanged matching necklaces bearing smooth rocks plucked from a river in the Great Smoky Mountains.

In the couple's kitchen, hundreds of red earthworms crawl contentedly through a compost bin filled with vegetable scraps and shredded newspaper.

But city regulations mean no dice on the composting toilet.

The month-old Homegrown Edible Landscaping doesn't have much overhead, unless you count the old truck Alvarez bought for $275 or the bike he got at a stolen-property sale.

He and Herr, who also works as a mother's helper for a Hempfield family, avoid using credit.

"We feel like that's something that's also unsustainable," she says.

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Alvarez and Herr will simply design a garden and step away, or return regularly to water, weed and harvest.

Using heirloom, organic and local plants, hand tools, a bike and trailer, they will travel up to 10 miles from the humble home they share with their fox terrier, Buck.

Alvarez and Herr also build compost bins, mini-greenhouses and rainwater collection systems, of discarded or recycled components.

They hope to help homeowners divide their bounty through a co-op, the Lancaster Backyard Farm Initiative.

Gail Chaitkin, a retired teacher, plans to share the harvest from her garden — including flowering edibles and mushrooms cultivated under the deck — with friends and neighbors.

"Even going to a (farmers) market is not like taking it from your own backyard," says Chaitkin, of Manheim Township.

A lot of the business is about education — and changing perceptions, Alvarez says.

Homeowners with tiny yards can still garden, using containers or vertical space. Beans, peas and kale can thrive in shade.

Alvarez and Herr work with nature, deterring weeds with ground cover or planting crops in circles to maximize space.

"You don't find rows in nature," Alvarez says.

Once the weather warms, they will pack berries, squash and greens into Joel and Rita Wiebner's small, shady city yard, with a compost heap in the middle.

"We'll have everything in our own backyard ... " Joel Wiebner says. "It's not going to waste anymore."

Alvarez and Herr admit their simple lifestyle isn't for everyone. But for now, they have everything they need.

Someday they'd like to own a small piece of land, so they can take their food-growing outside.

"This is one planet," Alvarez says. "We have to live in it forever. We have to take care of it.

"We have nowhere else to go."