HomeGrown: Kitchen Gardening as a Hobby

After winning the startup weekend Lahore’17 I pursued my idea and passion to promote kitchen gardening in Pakistan. HomeGrown is a platform to encourage horticulture enthusiasts into growing healthy plants and vegetables at home. Home Grown provides starting kits to buyers to help them set a roof or a vertical garden, which is a clever way to compensate for the lack of backyard space in congested cities. The starting kit consist of three different types of herbs or vegetable seeds, an instruction manual/gardening guidebook and a generous amount of coco-peat (a plant growing medium that serves as an alternative to the ordinary potting soil).

Motivation:

–  Create awareness about the diseases being spread due to the use of pesticides and contaminated water being used for irrigation. 

– Promote kitchen gardening as a hobby amongst children, house wives and retirement communities.

– Ensure creative use of tons of recyclable plastic and glass bottles, buckets, tiers etc. 

– Create awareness about cheap organic food options

What I accomplished:

– Set up demo roof gardens in my house and house of relatives. Received multiple orders to replicate the gardens in neighboring community.

– Involved schools by conducting workshops and hosting school visits to different demo spaces. Pitched to incorporate gardening as part of syllabus and have a small kitchen garden corner in school.

– Participated in multiple gardening exhibitions and festivals to create awareness. Seed packets were always sold out. 

– Worked with government to train rural communities in growing their own food as a community. Helped deserted communities in Baluchistan to set up their own garden.