Urban Gardening: A Realistic Approach
Here at 9floor Co-Living we have noticed the profusion of instagram accounts displaying perfectly curated explosions of plants inside apartments. We also wish to attain this level of effortless style, but the reality is that we usually manage to kill our plants shortly after bringing them home. After lovingly transferring our cute little herb friends to the perfect instagram-able pot, we either nervously over-water or completely neglect them until we need a photo to complete that perfect Saturday brunch collage.
Enter the hero of this story: Solene Cornilleau, founder of Concrete Garden.
Solene is a long time Taipei resident originally from Paris, France. Her organization seeks to enrich the lives of city folk by re-connecting them with nature. One way she is pursuing this goal is through workshops and lectures.
For this particular event series, Concrete Garden has teamed up with Moa Studio 毛房, a private chef service based in one of the apartments managed by 9floor. The goal of the workshop series is to teach sustainable, resource sensitive herb gardening techniques, and put forth basic suggestions for how herbs can be used in everyday cooking.
This first workshop took a back to the basics approach, analyzing common problems with conventional container gardening and proposing a basic set of guidelines for herb gardening in a manner that is not only more in sync with nature, but also ultimately more convenient for fast-paced lifestyles.
The basic method that Solene advocates for has these main facets:
-Choose plants well-suited for your particular environment. This seems obvious, but is easily one of the most common problems leading to failure.
-Take steps to promote soil health. Ideally, plants need help from symbiotic micro-organisms to take in the nutrition already present in soil.
-Use mulch to prevent excessive water loss and to provide an ideal environment for the precious micro-organisms that activate the inherent potential of the soil.
Solene provided participants with personalized advice on herbs suitable for the specific conditions of their homes and cuttings to take and cultivate.
Yuan of Moa Studio gave participants tips on how to pair specific herbs with different vegetables, meats, and even desserts.
Yuan also graciously prepared afternoon tea snacks to give participants examples of the herbs in use.
The next workshop will focus on choosing ideal containers for your plants and how to pair different plants in the same container.
Solene says that with the right container and healthy, mulch-protected soil it is possible to go as long as two weeks between watering. Not only does this use less resources, but it also means you can go hang out on a beach for two weeks without worrying about your plants.
That’s a gardening method we can all benefit from.
-9floor Co-Living
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