The vaults rose up as high as the city walls, bearing reeds richly bedded in bitumen and gypsum. The layered galleries peered each beyond its neighbour to reach the sunlight, and water drawn from the river was pumped through conduits up to the highest level. The topsoil was thick enough to root even the largest trees...These were the renowned Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as described by the Greek historians Diodorus and Callisthenes, and the earliest example of vertical farming - at least according to Dan Caiger-Smith. His company, Valcent, is taking the concept into the 21st century, recently launching the first farm of its kind at Paignton Zoo in Devon.It's a beguilingly simple idea: make maximum use of a small amount of space by filling glass houses with plant beds stacked high one above the other.
The vaults rose up as high as the city walls, bearing reeds richly bedded in bitumen and gypsum. The layered galleries peered each beyond its neighbour to reach the sunlight, and water drawn from the river was pumped through conduits up to the highest level. The topsoil was thick enough to root even the largest trees...
These were the renowned Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as described by the Greek historians Diodorus and Callisthenes, and the earliest example of vertical farming - at least according to Dan Caiger-Smith. His company, Valcent, is taking the concept into the 21st century, recently launching the first farm of its kind at Paignton Zoo in Devon.
It's a beguilingly simple idea: make maximum use of a small amount of space by filling glass houses with plant beds stacked high one above the other.
They get less light (consider that in summer they only get sin(theta) light compared with cos(theta) light for a horizontal garden, require much more infrastructure (you need to hold the plants up, get water to them, complex equipment to pick food).
I've built many over the years, they are nice to look at, they protect the walls from the weather, they can cool the house (though much less efficiently than putting reflective foil on the wall) and they are fun to make.
But they're not going to save the world. Sorry about that.
The climate seems to be on a tipping point right now and food production will probably collapse from under us. keep to the Fen Causeway
