Building 20 vertical gardens in Kenya

James, the project lead on the ground in Kenya, recently visited residents and beneficiaries of this project.

Five weeks since our beneficiary communities established their garden towers with funding from Kwanda, it is a delight to report that they are now harvesting fresh vegetable produce! At the Wamunyu special school, the students, led by their teacher, Mr Henry, harvested kale and spinach for their dinner at school. Being a boarding school, the garden towers are offering a cheap supply of nutrition to the students. The gardens have also been harvested at the Kenya Connect Resource Center, and the vegetables are served as lunch for the staff. At the individual homesteads, the gardens provide healthy vegetables to the families, with some selling the excess to earn some income.

On average, each garden tower has about 75 plants of both kale and spinach. Each garden tower is watered with an average of 10 litres daily.

At some homesteads, the beneficiaries have faced a challenge of chickens eating the vegetables but they have since innovated by providing either an enclosure of gunny bags, old mosquito netting or even thorny bushes around the gardens. The vegetables are organically grown using organic compost. The project aims to promote food security, empower women through agricultural entrepreneurship, and encourage environment-friendly farming practices.

One of the project beneficiaries, Joyce, commented:

The tower gardens have transformed the way we approach food production. I never knew I could produce my own vegetables in a small piece of land during the dry season using low quantities of water. Not only do the gardens provide my family with fresh vegetables, but they also empower us as women to contribute to our household's well-being.

The locals continue to be very grateful to Kwanda as they reap the benefits of the garden tower technology.

I am delighted to share some photos of the progress of the garden towers.

The gardens have thrived since the locals planted their towers about three weeks ago!

The locals have been caring for the gardens through constant watering and weeding. At the special school, the gardens offer students an opportunity to experience practical lessons on good crop husbandry practices.

Very soon, they will provide a healthy diet for the students! Our staff have been visiting the homesteads and the Wamunyu special school to monitor the progress. So far, we have yet to experience challenges.

We anticipate the beneficiaries will start harvesting the vegetables for domestic use in the coming weeks.

Photographs

Teacher Henry doing a practical agriculture lesson with students at special school:

Students at Wamunyu Special school weeding their garden towers:

Joyce watering her garden tower:

Peter attending one of the garden towers:

We just received these beautiful photos from the Wamunyu Special School.

The vertical gardens are now being built there.

Here are photos of the kids at Wamunyu Special School helping build them.

Today, the first vertical garden was set up!

In the training, we invited five women from five homesteads who will benefit from the garden towers and a teacher from the Wamunyu special school.

Trainees were trained on setting up the garden towers, including how to mix the soil with organic manure, compact the soil, and plant the seedlings.

It’s inspiring to see the real thing built and looking sturdy.

Today, five locals underwent training in the construction of vertical gardens - a more efficient method for growing crops with less water usage.

They learnt the entire production process from cutting to sewing and accurately puncturing openings on the vertical garden structures.

This week, our team started working on preparing the seed beds for setting up the nurseries for the seedlings that we will be planting in the vertical gardens.

The nurseries are set up at the Kenya Connect campus since there is a reliable supply of water. We have sown the seeds for kale and spinach. In a week's time, they should have germinated! Attached are some pics.

Hi, everyone.

We are beginning this work and planning to commence the training on vertical gardens in February.

At the same time, we will begin to establish seed nurseries for the different vegetables that we will be planting in the gardens once that work begins.