Plantagon
Many will agree with me that gardening is the one of the most relaxing hobbies. There's almost nothing better than working with the soil to make your garden look like a wonderland or to grow your own organic veggies. We can't deny, however, that with passing time, gardening trends and concepts are changing. Nowadays you don't need a huge space to fulfill all your gardening dreams. In this article I want to show you a couple of super-modern concepts that we will be seeing in more and more gardens in the future.
Plantagon
Plantagon International AB is a Swedish company founded in 2008, the main aims and activities of which revolve around "developing technologies for greenhouse cultivation in large urban areas," often called vertical agriculture/farming. Simply put, Plantagon wants to make innovative, high-quality urban farming possible with as little negative effect on the environment as possible. That should be done through "integrated solutions for energy, excess heat, waste, CO2 and water." Sweden is the country where the roots of Plantagon lie, and the very first urban greenhouse is thus based in Linköping.
In my opinion, the Plantagon greenhouse truly is a brilliant idea. It's the perfect combination of environmental consciousness and modern design. The efforts of this forward-thinking company have not gone unnoticed and in 2009, its greenhouse was mentioned in the Globe Forum Sustainable Innovators top 100 list. Plantagon has furthermore won the international innovator's "Innovation Idol" competition and become widely recognized as a modern solution for urban farming. What do you think?
Agri-Cube
Agri Cube
As I said in the beginning of this article, you don't need huge space to grow your own veggies. The agri-cube, developed by Japanese company Daiwa House, is one of the reasons why. Thanks to this amazing invention, anyone can grow vegetables at home, as fast as ever and in any weather. Trust me, this $70,000 parking-space-sized cube could change your life. It has absolutely everything that "plants need to grow, from lighting that can be adjusted for each type of plant to water recycling."
If the conditions are good, one cube can give you as much as 10,000 vegetables per year. A vegetable, considering electricity costs, would cost you less than 50 cents. The overall price of the Agri-Cube is, however, quite high and there are certainly many who simply cannot afford it. This invention is most likely particularly attractive to restaurants, as many want to use their own vegetables and due to their limited space, the Agri-Cube might seem like a gift from heaven.
Rooftop Fish Farm
Today, a rooftop isn't an unusual place to grow plants and vegetables or raise animals. All those who favour this kind of farming will fall in love with a new fascinating invention, the rooftop fish farm. A special "bamboo greenhouse designed to organically grow fish and vegetables on top of generic flat roofs" offers those with limited space a fantastic alternative to a garden. Amazingly enough, this fabulous greenhouse could produce as many as 100 kilograms of fish and 400 kilograms of vegetables annually.
The expected results of the prototype Globe/Hedron do not require difficult measures at all. Everything is actually based on a very simple process: "The fish's water nourishes the plants and plants clean the water for the fish". That's what I call a perfect collaboration.
New Way to Use Camping Lanterns
Eco-Lantern
Designer Franklin Gaw came up with a quite unusual but very intriguing idea for how to use camping lanterns! Just imagine a lovely walk in nature with a lantern lighting your way that helps to grow saplings of native trees. Sounds good, doesn't it? This is now possible thanks to Gaw's amazing concept. It's very simple. Lanterns should, besides their obvious function, serve as a kind of terrarium for trees until the sprouts are big enough to be planted. I have to say this idea is, in my opinion, very original and it does sound brilliant. I wonder what would happen if the light got too hot, however.
Sill Farm
Somewhat similar to the aforementioned rooftop aquarium is this sill farm concept. It also is the perfect combination of an aquarium and a greenhouse — in this case a tiny greenhouse, however. Sill farm has been designed for condominium apartments with limited space, so it perfectly fits into a regular window sill. The greenhouse "sits on the sill and a suspended fish tank that provides organic nutrients for the plants, and the plant life filters the toxic fish waste." Mutual dependence and cooperation is very much visible here and that, in my opinion, makes this concept even more special. It's always amazing to see different parts of nature work together!