As rural to urban mi­gra­tion surges in Kenya and many parts of the world, many res­id­ents are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to put food on the table due to the high cost of liv­ing. However, some urban res­id­ents are com­ing up with in­nov­at­ive ways to grow ve­get­ables on scarce land in towns by em­bra­cing hanging gar­dens.

A hanging garden is a  sus­tain­able land­scape ar­chi­tec­ture, an artistic  garden or a small urban farm at­tached to or built on a wall. They are mainly found in areas where land is scarce or where the farmer is mo­bile or tem­por­ar­ily liv­ing.

Es­ther Ki­mani is one such farmer who has em­braced the idea of hanging garden in her Nyeri town home so as to feed her fam­ily of five. When Farm­biz Africa vis­ited demon­stra­tion stand at the Cent­ral Kenya Ag­ri­cul­tural show at Kabiru­ini grounds in out­skirts of Nyeri County on 16th Septem­ber 2017, she was busy edu­cat­ing at­tendees on the im­port­ance of hanging gar­dens as a way to pro­mote sus­tain­able urban farm­ing.

READ ALSO: Farmer cham­pi­on­ing rooftop garden­ing in Mom­basa

“At first my neigh­bors and fam­ily mem­bers were skep­tical about the idea as they be­lieved suc­cess­ful farm­ing can only be done in rural farms with ad­equate space” said Es­ther. She however went ahead with her plans and es­tab­lished a hanging garden in her back­yard space.

READ ALSO: Em­bra­cing urban farm­ing

She first iden­ti­fied the por­tion of the back­yard garden with dir­ect ac­cess to sun­light as it is im­port­ant for the growth of the plants. She then em­ployed a cas­ual who fixed posts and hanging tim­ber across to sup­port her pots which she used to plant kales, spin­ach and onions. She pur­chased ready seed­lings from Nyeri town and trans­planted them to poly­thene bags which could ac­com­mod­ate about 3 to 4 plants at a go.

The pots are mixed with top soil and or­ganic ma­nure at the rate of 1:1 ac­cord­ing to Es­ther who notes that the pro­cess takes care of the costly budget and pro­duces fresh, clean, safe ve­get­ables un­like the ones she used to buy earlier and was un­sure of their safety. She wa­ters the plants manu­ally twice in a day in the dry sea­son, in the morn­ing and even­ing.

READ ALSO: Ver­tical bag farms, re­lief to small holder farm­ers

She sells the ve­get­ables from her back­yard garden to neigh­bors and other urban dwell­ers within Nyeri town. Es­ther ad­vises urban fam­il­ies to con­sider ven­tur­ing into this type of farm­ing as it is eco­nom­ic­ally vi­able, more hy­gienic and pro­duces cheap ve­get­ables all year round for your urban fam­ily.

With the re­volu­tion of ag­ri­cul­ture in Kenya and across the globe, this farm­ing method comes in at the right time to cater to the needs of the urban dwell­ers who not only worry about avail­ab­il­ity but also the high chem­ical residue on ve­get­ables in the urban mar­kets.