Lorraine McGibbon, WESSA's educational representative is presenting a workshop on building a vertical bottle garden on Saturday 10 November from 09:00 to 12:00.
It will take place at the Moriarty Environmental Centre at the Garden Route Botanical Garden, 49 Caledon Street.
"Food security and the cost and availability of food in South Africa has reached critical levels. We need to constantly investigate and experiment with different ways of growing food," says Lorraine.
She says that the concept of a 'vertical bottle garden' came from window gardens found in Europe. There are many skyscrapers that have huge window gardens in the buildings.
They use specialised pumps to circulate water. The vertical bottle garden in this "how to" has been modified to suit SA needs and accessibility to resources.
This workshop is part of the national Stepping up to Sustainability programme implemented nationally by WESSA and funded at 11 centres by USAID.
"The goal is to put into practice the lifestyle choices we all need to make. These innovative concepts are set to expand as we all step up to sustainability and seek to change our environmental footprints into environmental handprints of practice for a more sustainable future," says Lorraine.
Benefits of the garden:
- It is vertical and can be placed anywhere;
- It works on gravity feed to irrigate the bottles;
- You are re-using plastic bottles;
- Water is recycled through this process;
- It is cheap and easy to construct;
- You have a high yield of vegetables;
- It looks beautiful.
Refreshments will be available from the Botanical Garden Tea Garden.
For more information, send an e-mail to wessageorge@isat.co.za.
