Vertical Gardens help boost the health of families who don’t always have enough money to buy nutritious food.

Palawan is a beautiful island on the western side of the Philippines, but many people there are hungry, and many more do not eat very nutritious food, nor give optimal diets to their growing children.

But five communities in and around Puerto Princesa, Palawan, are already dotted with tubular blue storage drums overflowing with green leaves.  The drums have a series of moon shaped openings in them, and they are filled with an incredibly rich mixture of soil and compost, but need little water (always scarce in these communities) – but families with one of these vertical gardens eat fresh and healthy vegetables regularly.  

Vertical Gardens are recycled containers into which we make holes on the sides for plants to grow through, but that don’t allow the soil to fall out. We fill the Gardens with soil mixed with compost, carbonized rice hull, bat guano and rock mineral mix to increase fertility and encourage healthy plants without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides. The Vertical Gardens take up less space than conventional gardens, and allow women to grow vegetables even when they live in crowded conditions with no green space. With these gardens, our clients can grow vegetables for their consumption, and some enterprising women have even used their gardens for extra income.

Now we want to share the Vertical Gardens with the people in our newest community, Magsasaka. This village is up in the mountains, and the houses hold tight to the downward slopes; few have space for full gardens.  But the vertical gardens can go anywhere, will fit on one square meter of land.  When we teach nutrition, we put up a garden in a public space, fill it with soil, and demonstrate its use.  Then we are overwhelmed with orders, and we make and deliver and install as fast as we can.  

Help us help the people in this mountain community to grow and eat fresh, nutritious vegetables!