Hydroponic Garden Workshop in Lembeh

Growing Hydroponic vegetable and flowers in waste plastic bottles

As part of our educational program with the aim of providing local communities with the knowledge, tools and skills they need to become more sustainable and to re-use plastic waste, we recently conducted a hydroponic gardening workshop in our local villa of Batu Riri.

The hydroponic workshop was attended by 50 women from local communities and the Heads of the villages and the Lembeh Women's Association

The workshop was a huge success and was attended by 50 women from the villages of Batu Riri and Gunung Woka along with the Heads of both villages and the Head of the Lembeh Women's Association. The ladies learned how to grow hydroponic flowers and vegetables (including celery, mint, lemon grass and lettuces) by up-cycling waste plastic bottles.

Lembeh Foundation Team hosted the workshop and also embraced the hydroponic initiative

The process was a simple one for them to grasp and as a result, the ladies now have flowers and a selection of vegetables growing hydroponically in the villages and at their homes. Being able to produce a selection of vegetables in this way is a revelation for many of the villagers and for those with small or no gardens, growing produce wasn't an option before the workshops. The hydroponic planters which they have made can be suspended from trees or mounted to walls, giving them a whole new growing space.

Attaching the hydroponic planters to trees has opened up entirely new growing spaces

To make the hydroponic planters the women were shown how to cut a 1.5 litre plastic water bottle in half and invert the top end and place it inside the base piece. Small holes were made in the bottle neck and shoulders which strips of cotton (cut up old t-shirts) were inserted to form "roots" which can draw the water from the base unit into the top half of the planter which is filled with soil and seeds.

The communities have embraced the hydroponic initiative and there will be a hydroponic garden competition on Independence Day

The women and their families (including our own Lembeh Foundation team members) have embraced the project with enthusiasm and are even holding a hydroponic garden competition as part of their Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on August 17th!

If you’d like to support Lembeh Foundation and our ongoing initiatives on Lembeh Island by making a donation, please contact us on info@LembehFoundation.org or click here for more information.

We will send you a donation form, and as we are a registered Indonesian Charity (Yayasan), once your donation is received we will also send you a tax form for claiming tax relief.