BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

As part of an effort to transform Singapore into a ‘City in Nature’, NParks launched the ‘Gardening with Edibles’ programme to encourage members of the public to grow edible plants at home to connect with nature and to strengthen social resilience. This effort is also aligned with the national ’30 by 30’ vision of producing 30% of our nutritional needs locally by 2030.

While NParks has accelerated the launch of more allotment garden plots in our parklands as well as community gardens across Singapore, HDB common corridors could be a productive location for growing edible plants as well. Hence, our project aims to design a planter system to encourage residents to start or continue growing edibles in their corridor spaces.

PROBLEM

Growing edibles is not an easy task - many factors such as the amount of light and water received, and the presence of pests affect plant growth. The lack of knowledge to deal with these issues is a pain point for both the experienced and inexperienced gardeners, with the latter being more likely to quit gardening after not having a rewarding initial experience. 

Growing edibles in common corridors also brings a new set of problems. Unlike growing in an outdoor open space, high-rise HDB corridors receive varying amounts of sunlight daily; they are also constrained by limited space and the need to maintain adequate unobstructed walkway width (for emergency access/evacuation) when incorporating plantings. It is also tricky to implement existing solutions that requires electricity to mitigate the above problems due to the lack of power sockets in corridors.

SOLUTION

We came up with a solution that takes the form of a physical planter system as well as a complementary mobile application to address the problems above. Our solution is:

Modular such that users can customise according to their needs and budget, choosing only the add on components that can address the problems that they are facing. The base product comes with unique pot sleeves that can be easily attached to the pot to support the add on components. 

Versatile to suit the built environment of HDBs and the preferences of users. It is adjustable to accommodate for different parapet types and widths, comprises of readily available off-the-shelf parts and can be converted from a soil-based system to a hydroponics system if that is what the user prefers.

Smart such that it addresses the lack of knowledge on the users’ part, and is energy efficient to overcome the power socket constraints in corridors.