Tag Archives: home gardening

How To Make Compost At Home

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Composting is an aerobic procedure that requires oxygen and transforms organic substances into a nutrient-rich soil enhancer or mulch via the process of natural decomposition. Microorganisms consume materials in the compost pile, utilizing carbon and nitrogen for growth, water for digestion, and oxygen for respiration, resulting in compost—a dark, crumbly material with an earthy smell. Composting is nature’s method of recycling naturally, helping in reducing waste, combating climate change, and enhancing the quality of the soil. The biggest advantage is that one can compost kitchen food scraps along with dry leaves and woody debris from your yard at home.

Designer: Otis Oat

What are the benefits of composting?

• Composting allows one to recycle food scrap and manage waste more sustainably.
• It helps in reducing the volume of materials that may get disposed of in landfills or trash incinerators, thereby reducing the emission of powerful greenhouse gases.

Designer: Homesteading Where You Are

• Composting requires minimal effort and is a cost-effective way to produce high-quality soil amendments while reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides.
• Another advantage is that composting is that it creates nutrient-rich soil, prevents soil erosion, conserves water, and improves plant growth.

What are the different types of composting?

Composting can be broadly classified into backyard composting and vermicomposting.

Backyard Composting

Backyard composting includes carbon-rich materials or browns like dry leaves, twigs, plant stalks, nitrogen-rich materials, or greens like grass clippings and food scraps. Composting involves the presence of water and oxygen, where carbon-rich materials serve as food for microorganisms, and nitrogen-rich materials generate heat in the pile.

Image Source: Plantophiles

• For backyard composting, the first step is to decide on a method for gathering and storing browns outdoors and collect fruit and vegetable scraps in a sealed container either on your kitchen counter, under your sink, or in your fridge or freezer.
• Identify an accessible, well-draining space in your yard for a compost pile, and select a bin type, that can be constructed from materials like wire, wood, cinder blocks, or enclosed options such as barrels and tumblers.
• Chop and break down the browns and greens into smaller pieces before adding them to the pile to expedite the decomposition process.
• Construct the compost pile with a four- to six-inch layer of substantial browns, like twigs and wood chips, to absorb excess liquids, elevate the pile, and facilitate air circulation at the base. Follow by layering greens and, add a bit of water to moisten the pile. Note that the browns should be at least three times the greens.
• As the compost pile decomposes, the center temperature initially rises. One can speed up decomposition and aerate by turning and mixing the pile with a garden fork. Monitor moisture, odor, and temperature, adjusting as needed. Adjust the compost by moistening and turning if it’s too dry, adding browns and turning if there’s an odor, mixing in greens, and turning if it’s not heating up.
• Once your compost pile stops heating up and shows no visible food scraps after mixing, let it cure for at least four weeks, relocating the oldest compost if desired. Note that after curing, the pile will be reduced to about one-third.
• Well-maintained compost is ready in three to five months, looking dark, loose, and crumbly with a soil-like smell. Screen or sift the finished compost to remove undecomposed materials, such as twigs or fruit pits, and add them back to the active or new pile if desired.
• Well-constructed and properly maintained compost piles, whether in bins or open, should not attract pests or rodents. If using a bin, reinforce it with a lid and potentially a floor, ensuring no holes or gaps larger than ¼ inch. Cover and bury food scraps in the pile, and avoid adding meat, dairy, or greasy foods.

Vermicomposting

Vermicomposting employs specific earthworm species to enhance the organic waste conversion process, utilizing microorganisms and earthworms in a mesophilic environment. Earthworms consume organic materials, producing granular excrement known as vermicompost, which, in simple terms, improves soil’s biological, chemical, and physical properties. The earthworm’s digestive tract secretions aid in breaking down soil and organic matter, enriching the castings with readily available nutrients for plants. Various organic residues, including straw, husk, leaves, stalks, and livestock or poultry wastes, can be transformed into vermicompost, with earthworms reducing waste volume by 40–60 percent.

Types of Compost Bins

Here is a curated assortment of innovative compost bins.

1. Handheld Composting Machine

Designer: Shihcheng Chen

The ReGreen is a compact handheld device simulates the look of a miniature waste-disposal machine and incorporates an aluminum grinder that efficiently crushes and pulverizes waste while promoting quick biodegradation. The device features a top opening for waste input, a rotating arm that facilitates gentle pulverization and its base allows water drainage for compost drying. After waste is processed, one can introduce enzymes to speed up composting and convert organic waste into nutrient-rich compost.

2. Plant Cultivator and Compost Bin

Designer: Robin Akira

Paradise is an automated plant cultivator and compost bin designed to decrease domestic waste via the use of integrated technology that notifies users about compost and plant care needs. Inspired by the pandemic-driven shift to home-centric living, designer Robin Akira created Paradise to integrate greenery into interior spaces while addressing the global rise in domestic waste with its composting features and odor-sealing lid.

3. Compost Bin cum Indoor Garden

Designer: Chaozhi Lin

In a changing world where sustainability is a personal commitment, KAGURA, a self-sustaining indoor gardening system created by Chaozhi Lin, facilitates composting and vegetable cultivation. Consisting of a food waste container, elevated light structure, and three soil pots, KAGURA transforms scraps into compost, nourishing plants with an attractive, compact light fixture. Designed to fit any kitchen or living space, this system caters to environmentally conscious individuals in urban settings, addressing the challenge of limited yard space and making sustainable living feasible for city homes.

4. Compost Sleek Bin

Designer: Alp Çakın

Homepost, an innovative composting station, addresses waste challenges in office environments by accelerating the composting process, containing odors, and providing additional storage space. Its efficient design allows for the transformation of diverse organic waste, including plastics, paper, nutshells, teabags, coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable scraps, and eggshells. The system’s environmentally friendly construction, made from sustainable green polyethylene, absorbs carbon dioxide during production. Featuring a rotating arm for easy transportation, Homepost’s modules nest efficiently for minimal space occupancy during transit.

5. Composting Machine

Designer: Jinhwi Bang

Reencle tackles the escalating food waste issue in the USA by efficiently breaking down household food-prep waste, bones, peels, leftovers, and expired products into compost within 24 hours. Roughly the size of a trash bin, Reencle features an automatic opening lid and a control panel, with microorganisms inside its chamber facilitating the composting process. The mechanical churning system reduces waste volume through vigorous mixing, and any emissions are filtered to release trace amounts of water vapor and clean air. This at-home solution transforms food waste into nutrient-rich compost for gardens or disposal, mitigating environmental harm caused by landfill decomposition.

6. Stainless Steel Compost Bin

Designer: Adrian Moro

Kamoro’s Compost Bin is crafted with a streamlined airflow design that both dries out waste and provides essential oxygen for microbial survival, ensuring the effortless cultivation of a healthy compost batch. Its double-walled construction consists of an outer stainless-steel container and an inner plastic bucket. The stainless-steel container incorporates a perforated base to establish an airflow pattern, and an activated carbon filter on top effectively filters outgoing air, reducing any odors generated during the organic breakdown process.

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This at-home plant cultivator keeps a minimalist design and grows any plant indoor, in your kitchen!

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Balance is an at-home plant cultivator that keeps a small enough size and minimalist design to fit into any modern kitchen.

The pandemic proved that having access to your source of produce should be as commonplace as having access to clean drinking water. Still, the majority of us rely on grocery stores and delivery apps to get our produce and fresh greenery. While keeping our eyes peeled for buzz words like organic and local harvest is a personal choice, there’s no way of knowing exactly under what conditions and where our produce is harvested.

Balance, a plant cultivator designed by Designer Dot, is designed for those of us who’d like access to a personal supply of fresh produce at home without the hassle of tending to a garden day-in, day-out.

Designer Dot is known for its extensive catalog of household appliances. Designer Dot is all about merging minimalist aesthetics with convenient design from wireless portable chargers to self-contained coffee brewers.

When creating Balance, the team at Designer Dot sought to conceptualize an at-home plant cultivator that’s compact enough to fit into any modern kitchen and inconspicuous in its minimalist design to adapt to any interior design scheme.

Stocked similarly to most plant cultivators, Balance comes with pull-out drawers that contain pods and sprout cavities for produce and crops to germinate from and grow. The drawers themselves can be removed to allow ceiling height for taller plants to grow, which users can swap in and out for different plants accordingly.

Once the seeds are planted, Balance takes care of the rest. Inside Balance, LEDs pour nonstop grow light over the seedlings to ensure healthy crops come time to harvest. To prevent the LEDs from busying the kitchen too much, Designer Dot built-in scroll blinds to shield the cultivator’s light from view.

Keeping a rather minimal exterior, Balance originally comes in a blush pink shade, which users can customize to fit their tastes.

Metallic ribbing with integrated haptic sensor technology runs down the length of Balance’s front facade, functioning as the appliance’s control panel. There, users will find the on/off button, temperature dials, as well as other control switches that work to optimize growing conditions for the plants inside. Additionally, like most modern home appliances, Balance comes with an accompanying app that suggests the best care for each user’s specific plants.

Designer: Designer Dot

Balance’s integrated smartphone app alerts users when plants require special care. 

Intuitive app reminders signal to users the overall conditions of their plants. 

When placed in the kitchen, Balance’s scroll blinds provide a stylish way of covering the appliance’s bright LEDs. 

Along Balance’s front facade, metallic ribbing encases haptic control panels.

The post This at-home plant cultivator keeps a minimalist design and grows any plant indoor, in your kitchen! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tiny self-watering self-lighting planter lets you effortlessly grow a garden in your home

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While some appreciate getting down and dirty with soil, seeds, and fertilizers, gardening isn’t for everyone. The Nano Garden takes the fuss out of gardening, allowing anyone and everyone to grow their own plants right inside their home!

I like thinking of gardening as cooking… a complex, rewarding activity that doesn’t come naturally to everyone. With that analogy, I think of the Nano Garden as instant ramen – fulfilling, yet easy enough for anyone to manage! The Nano Garden is a tiny planter that comes with everything you need to grow plants at home. Its planter base holds water, a gardening pod contains seeds along with all the nutrients required to make them grow, and finally, a height-adjustable full-spectrum light automatically switches on and off to mimic the sun, giving the plants the light they need to photosynthesize!

The Nano Garden features a two-part planter that waters and aerates itself thanks to its clever design. The pot itself holds water, while the floater inside houses the plant-pod – an all-in-one compostable pod that contains seeds and nutrients suspended within a growth medium. The pod floats on water, taking in as much as the plants need… and as the water level depletes, the floating pod descends downwards into the planter. This allows you to visually gauge how much water there is within your Nano Garden’s reservoir, allowing you to easily fill it up. A full water reservoir lasts anywhere from 2 weeks to a month (depending on the plant you grow), and the plant technically waters itself – so you never need to worry about over or under-watering your plants. The planter is accompanied by a neat light that sits on a telescopic arm that you can height-adjust as your plant grows. The full-spectrum light is fine-tuned to mimic the rays of the sun, and it automatically switches on and off as the sun rises and sets. Each Nano Garden even comes with an app that lets you connect your smartphone to the planter via Bluetooth and allows it to automatically adjust its light intensity and duration based on the plant.

The Nano Garden offers a range of 50 plants to choose from – spanning flowers, decorative greens, and even herbs and leafy vegetables. The magic lies in its plant-pod, a bio-plastic pod that houses the seeds in a nutrient-dense growth medium. The pods are GMO and pesticide-free, and are guaranteed to sprout – creators of the Nano Garden, Prêt à Pousser, even offer replacement pods if they don’t grow. The pods automatically draw water from the reservoir below, and the Nano Garden’s design even promotes air-flow through the roots, keeping them well oxygenated. Along with choosing your plant pod, you even get to choose the color of your planter – ranging from the classic earthy terracotta to a host of pastel hues that add a touch of vibrance to your home. The fact that they don’t need direct sunlight means you can place your Nano Garden anywhere, and the lack of drainage holes at the base means you can easily keep them on tables, bookshelves, or even your kitchen counter! After all, all you need to really do is add water every 2-4 weeks and watch your home garden flourish on its own!

Designer: Alain Berteau

Click Here to Buy Now: $79 $99 (20% off). Hurry, less than 72 hours left! Raised over $200,000.

Nano Garden – From Seed to Plant in a Tiny Smart Garden

The Nano Garden is the easiest and most stylish way to grow plants at home. Plug it, choose your plant pod (over 50 available) and add water.

How it Works

It starts with a pod that contains everything.

Simply insert the pod into the floater.

The plant floats on water and you have to top it up every 2 to 4 weeks.

Height adjustable light allows you to follow the growth of your plant.

The app enables you to select your plant for specific settings like intensity and duration.

Grow 50+ Plants on your Desk

Versatile & Minimalistic Design

Remove the light rod and stick it in any plant.

Color Options

Click Here to Buy Now: $79 $99 (20% off). Hurry, less than 72 hours left! Raised over $200,000.

This smart indoor gardening system uses an automated irrigation system to take care of your plants!

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If we learned one thing during quarantine, it was to not underestimate the power of plants. Bedrooms and workspaces alike seem to open up once we incorporate some greenery into the mix. Due to tight corners and lack of natural sunlight, city apartments don’t tend to plants too well. To provide a modular, compact gardening system fit for city living, Elif Bulut created Loop, a smart plant pot that takes care of your greenery while you’re away.

Loop is a smart planting system that feeds and tends to your plants while you’re away through an automated irrigation system. The agriculture system is shaped like a plume, flowering from the top and the bottom, keeping the seed modules in a radial row to form a skirt. Each seed module is detachable and securely locks onto one another through junction sockets, forming a link. Along the underbridge of the system’s lid, LEDs disperse light over the plants, adjusting their levels according to the time of day.

Users simply add seeds to the modules, position the modules to match up with the irrigation system, lock the top water reservoir into place, then watch as the water drips and the plants grow. Loop’s top lid links the system’s base with its irrigation pool so that users can also adjust the amount of water that flows into each module, ranging from sparse or open flow to frequent irrigation. Once the irrigation measure is settled on, the system’s integrated smart technology tends to each plant and keeps track of their condition to achieve optimal indoor settings. Loop provides a way for those who live in the city to still have access to gardening and all of the perks that come with it.

Designer: Elif Bulut

Shaped like a double-sided trumpet, Loop takes the familiar shape of many modern-day home appliances.

Equipped with plant modules and an automated irrigation system, Loop is designed for easy operation.

Loop comes with an integrated LED light system that nourishes plants with energy.

The brightness of the LED lights change according to the time of day.

Loop’s irrigation system allows users to adjust the drip between sparse and frequent amounts.

The modules lock into place with the irrigation system’s faucets.

Each plant module forms the system’s skirt by linking up at junction points.

This herb garden was designed with smart monitoring tech & fits inside your kitchen cabinet to save space!

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We have all killed a plant or two let’s just admit it. Gardening isn’t for everyone but it is sure nice to have fresh herbs to add to your meals. Imagine making a bomb pizza and realizing you don’t have basil (gasps!). To avoid such catastrophes even those of us without green thumbs do our best to keep herbs in our kitchen. The only drawback is that having five small pots takes up a lot of counter space and also can attract bugs. Leaving herbs out on the window is not an option because they won’t survive extreme weather and maybe birds will get to it before you do. But this herb garden design takes care of all these minor inconveniences while making sure your plants thrive!

The design lets you have access to fresh greenery 365 days a year without sacrificing any counter space or causing a mess. It is compact and works wonderfully for small urban apartments or big suburban houses. What makes this herb garden unique its compactness because it makes it invisible in your kitchen space. Designer Igor Abakumov drew inspiration from his own life experience for this. “My mom is a real culinary virtuoso and she often complains about the lack of specific greens in the store. And then I got the idea to design a home garden that will be built into the kitchen and will delight with greenery all year round,” he explains.

Simply named Home Garden, this nifty design is basically a herb drawer that is built into the kitchen. It comes with an integrated smart system that monitors the moisture and temperature of plants, as well as their freshness and readiness for use. It is 2021, so of course, all of this can be adjusted directly from your phone. Home Garden is one of the entries for the James Dyson Awards 2021.

Designer: Igor Abakumov

This indoor garden lets you grow up to thirty plants in the comfort of your home!

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We all miss the farmer’s market– those Sunday mornings, spending hours outside sifting through bins of locally grown kale and ripe cherry tomatoes. With the ongoing pandemic, those mornings feel like eons ago. While being in packed spaces like outdoor farmer’s markets is still discouraged, designs like indoor gardens provide ways for us to stay indoors and still get our farm-fresh produce without rubbing elbows with strangers. Gardyn, is one indoor garden that allows users to grow up to 30 different kinds of plants, needing no more than two feet worth of space.

The automatic gardening device, Gardyn uses hydroponic technology and app-powered maintenance to grow an assortment of seeds handpicked by each user. The thirty chosen yCubes stocked with seeds easily slide into the slots that dot Gardyn’s frame and sprouts appear within only a few days through app-integrated maintenance. An accompanying app called Kelby, essentially tracks the health status of the plants that fill out Gardyn, including water and humidity levels, temperature, as well as LED light dispersion. Through two high-resolution cameras, Kelby analyzes each plant’s development and adjusts the system’s parameters to optimize plant growth. In only four to five weeks, users can dig into their first harvest.

Gardyn’s fully-autonomous gardening system comes equipped with a six-gallon water reservoir that contains all the nourishment necessary for plants to grow for weeks. The system’s trademarked hybriponic technology also recirculates that water, along with air and supplementary nutrients in a closed-loop for the system’s roots to remain nourished and also to reduce water consumption by 95% when compared to traditional watering methods. The entire Gardyn system– the yPods, the aluminum columns, and the water reservoir– are made of high-quality, FDA-compliant, 100% recyclable materials to ensure that your garden is growing as naturally as possible.

Designer: Gardyn Tech

Click Here to buy Now!

Requiring no more than two feet, Gardyn can fit into any kitchen or garage!

Gardyn’s simple, sophisticated design even fits into your living room.

From a wide array of available seeds, Gardyn can grow anything from wheatgrass to dill, along with cherry tomatoes and even strawberries.

The trademarked yPods are made with recyclable materials and don’t need to be washed before use.

Along with Gardyn’s integrated watering system, plant nutrients come with each indoor gardening device.

Kelby, Gardyn’s accompanying app automatically takes care of your plants by tracking their development with two high-resolution cameras.

This tiny vegetable cultivator is an indoor garden for one, bring fresh food to your table!

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Now more than ever, I think we’re all itching to get outdoors to spend time in nature. Enjoying the natural pleasures of life, like gardening and cooking, has become a top priority for many of us. However, being stuck inside due to quarantine restrictions can make that difficult. I know I hardly have room on my window ledge for a hummingbird feeder, let alone a vegetable garden and I’m not the only one. Designers like Eun-Jeong Pi attempt to bridge the small spaces in which many of us live with our strong desires to still remain close to nature and live sustainably – Farmin, a smart vegetable cultivator designed by Pi, offers one such bridge.

Farmin is comprised of four main parts: the body, cover, seedling bags, and an LED lid. The body is definitely the hub of the vegetable cultivator, storing the soil, seedling bags, and water inlet. Along the left side of the body, an LED indicator signals to users when the soil in Farmin could use some water, which can then be distributed using the water inlet until filled completely. Then, on the right side, the body features an air filter that helps maintain the cultivator’s productivity and regulate the air that the plants breathe.

Dotted over the body’s surface, seedling bags provide good drainage and aeration for each cultivation period. Farmin’s transparent, yet foggy cover alludes to the morning fog in nature that nestles above evergreens in dense forests, working to remind users that their miniature vegetable garden can bring them closer to nature. Of course, the cover also works to contain the vegetable garden’s mature plants so that they don’t wilt or make a mess of your kitchenette. I know mine is already messy enough without any spilled soil. An LED lid also works to mimic sun rays for each vegetable to absorb and use as nutrients.

Nowadays, many of us have painted our thumbs green (even if the paint was toxic), and designs like Eun-Jeong Pi’s smart vegetable cultivator, Farmin provides the means to test them out and give smart home gardening a try. Millennials seemed to have been following this trajectory towards sustainable living for a while now and this time spent in quarantine has only solidified our dreams of cultivating our own small garden one day. Alexa, play ‘Garden Song’ by Phoebe Bridgers.

Designer: Eun-Jeong Pi

With the popularity of home gardening steadily increasing over the years, Eun-Jeong Pi created their own solution for small-scale gardening fit for your kitchen counter.

Through different ideations, Farmin ultimately assumed a soft and simple structure, allowing for intuitive operability and attractive display.

With an easy-to-use hinge door, Farmin hopes to help make home vegetable cultivation that much more accessible and the fruits of your labor that much more immediate.

An LED display offers different modes of operation, depending on the natural light that your vegetable garden might already be receiving. Turn on ‘Night Mode,’ when the sun goes down so that your home cultivator’s available light is maintained.

A slim water inlet allows users to nourish their garden with water, while an LED indicator signals when your soil might need some replenishment.

Farmin’s accompanying app provides users with the means to adjust the conditions inside Farmin so that their plants remain well-fed, while also offering fun tips for recipes and plant care.

These tables with built-in gardens is the perfect gardening hack every home needs!

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Living in smaller spaces often requires a lot of rearranging. I probably switch up my studio’s design on a monthly basis all in order to fit the ideal furniture to make the most out of the little space I have. Despite my efforts, I usually end up having to choose one item between three different pieces of furniture simply because my studio won’t fit more than that. This often makes it difficult to merge functionality with style. Of course, I’d much rather go for the loveseat over the desk, but where would I do my work? BloomingTables, dubbed “the world’s first living furniture line,” creates household tables that double as indoor gardens to cater to that exact dilemma.

It seems nowadays that people are trying to get closer and closer to nature, even in their own homes. Biophilic design is on the rise once more, and many of us who live in smaller spaces want to embrace nature indoors too. BloomingTables is a new biophilic desk design that embeds living plantlife into each table, just beneath the transparent, glass surface. BloomingTables comes in four variations: desk, coffee, entryway, and side tables. Each table is equipped with an acrylic tub that keeps the plant life, soil, and water in an airtight, designated space so that we won’t ever have to worry about leakage. The acrylic tubs are filled with layers of gravel and activated charcoal to absorb water and also to avoid the chance of overwatering the plant life. Once the soil layers are filled, we can then create our own arrangement of succulents, ferns, herbs, or even pebble art, ideal for those who like to cook, but don’t have enough room for both a desk and herb garden. The transparent glass surface adheres to suction cups and can be lifted to water the plant life below.

Each pinewood table comes in varying sizes, but come equipped with the same features, including a waterproof tub for soil and a twist-to-open drain valve on the off-chance your plant life is overwatered. BloomingTables, depending on the size ordered, can support up to 400lbs, which means this table design has successfully merged functionality with style. Everything from the painted steel hairpin legs and sheet of 6mm tempered glass, to the endless array of possible biophilic designs, echoes BloomingTables’ commitment to bringing the beauty of nature indoors.

Designer: BloomingTables

Click Here to Buy Now!

This hexagonal indoor planter system helps you choose plants that will flourish in your home’s natural lighting

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If you like gardening but live in a city apartment, finding out which plants thrive best changes everything. It could mean finding that exact time during the day when a sliver of sunlight hits your floor, giving your bamboo palms the energy needed to make it to another day. Or, it might mean finding the sweet spot in your kitchen or bathroom where you can water your ivy and let it properly drain. Whatever the case might be, Gromeo is a miniature living wall system, designed by Habitat Horticulture to bring us the ideal plant for our unique living spaces. Whether you live in an apartment with ample sunlight or in an apartment without windows, Gromeo delivers plants that are known to thrive in your specific living space.

I’ve got a fever for plants. It’s safe to say, especially with quarantine, we’ve all caught some of it at this point. But taking care of plants can get expensive and time-consuming. My ivy died by the time I learned how to take care of it. Gromeo was primarily created by the thinkers at Habitat Horticulture in order to make the benefits of home gardening accessible to anyone without the constant work that comes with maintaining the plant’s health. Similar to other home gardening systems, Gromeo integrates a base reservoir filled with one gallon of water and uses Growtex’s water-efficient wicking technology for plants to absorb water through capillary action, keeping them hydrated for up to three weeks. Without any plumbing or electrical work needed, Gromeo allows users to pick a wall system based on their living space’s particular light availability. Through a palette-devised key, users can choose between garden wall systems that need anywhere between minimal to constant sunlight. The low-light wall systems typically include lots of leafy greens like fern and palm leaves and the high-light wall systems offer pods filled with cactus and grass. Constructed entirely from maple wood, recycled and sustainable material, Gromeo caters to the environmentalist in each of us. The hanging wall system waters the plants on a daily basis, all that’s required of its user is refilling the reservoir located in the product’s base every two weeks.

Gromeo comes fully planted with the plants ideal for your living space and outfitted with mounting hardware and drywall anchors for easy application. A lot of self-sustaining home gardens today lose their appeal through wasteful construction and loud tech gimmicks, which result in little knowledge gained for users who are actually concerned with taking care of their plants. Gromeo seems to offer a compromise. From the chic and sustainably-sourced materials that make up the structure to the thoughtful approach taken in regard to the customization of each wall system according to a plant’s needs, Gromeo brings the fruits of gardening to even those of us who might not have known we had it in us to take care of a plant, let alone a whole garden.

Designer: Habitat Horticulture

 

This hydroponic smart garden mounts on your wall to remove the air pollutants accumulated in quarantine

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We get it – wanting to be in nature with fresh air after being holed up in quarantine for practically an entire year. In quarantine, I’m currently living in a tiny apartment in a city with an AQI that seems to perpetually read, “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” without a car and no want for transportation other than my own two feet. Trust me, I get it. Being locked up for so long can make you feel stir-crazy. To make up for it, I’ve bought more plants and flowers for myself in 2020 than I have my entire life. The team at Respira, experts in commercial living walls quote that 90% of our time is spent indoors. If my math is correct, with stricter stay-at-home orders put in place, then that’s a lot of days. In efforts to keep our indoor spaces feeling open and healthy, Mitchell Cowburn and Dylan Robertson founded the company New Earth Solutions, an Ontario-based firm focused on creating low-energy biophilic design solutions. With New Earth Solutions, they designed Respira, an air-purifying, modular wall garden that takes care of itself.

Respira, “is a hydroponic smart garden that optimizes the plant’s ability to remove indoor pollutants from your home through the science of biofiltration,” as described on the team’s website. Biofiltration is simply a natural form of air purification that takes place when microbes that live near a plant’s roots help recirculate clean air into indoor living spaces. Essentially, toxic air pollutants drift into Respira’s purifying system and an integrated fan pushes that air towards the roots of Respira’s plants, which cleanse the toxic air and turn it into healthy air we can breathe. The whole system comes in either white or black, with a 20W LED grow-light, and is manufactured using sustainably-sourced ABS plastic. Advertised as a garden that takes care of itself, Respira comes equipped with an integrated monitor that manages water temperature, levels, and flow, air temperature, humidity and TVOC levels, and the total amount of dissolved solids present in the plant’s water. If that’s not enough to keep up with the needs of your garden, text alerts can also be set so you can be notified each time one of your plants needs acute attention and Respira’s fully-automated care system allows users to tend to their plants from anywhere. The only responsibilities left for users are filling the water basin every ten days, changing the nutrients every six months, and washing the prefilter every two months. Check it out mom, I can feed my plants miles away from home.

The work that comes with taking care of a Respira plant system is, unsurprisingly, similar to taking care of everyday house plants, but by advertising their “backed-by-science” biofiltration system, Respira attempts to set their design above the rest. Soil biofiltration has garnered a lot of attention in the search for greener air purification models, but it’s still a relatively young technology. Installing biofiltration systems in living spaces can produce cleaner air, but leave it for bigger industrial spaces. The truth is, plant management is easy enough if your living space can accommodate it, and taking the time out to learn how to care for each one of your plants and their specific needs might get you closer to enjoying nature from behind closed doors than responding to a text ever could. Besides, I know of an outdoor nursery that sells ivy for ten bucks a pop and it’s within walking distance.

Designer: New Earth Solutions

Click Here to Buy Now!