It depends on where you are living of course, but in Belgium, backyard science usually ends up in regional archives or in the news bulletin of the local nature conservation organization.
Our backyard happens to be in front of our house and next to the ponds of an abbey (see image below). It has been popular among nature photographers for a while and is a regular feature on our city blog drieduizend, but now it seems that while I am planting potatoes or pruning our apple trees, colleagues from the Biology Department are performing top-science in my backyard. In a quite interesting letter in Nature, Ellen Decaestecker and colleagues demonstrate host-parasite evolutionary dynamics using mud cores obtained from the abbey’s ponds.
I have seen other scientists lingering around already (collecting Sticklebacks from the small stream next to our organic garden). I wonder when their backyard research will hit the journals (and why isn’t there a tropical forest in my garden?)

Abdij van ’t Park, Heverlee, Belgium © ie-fotografie