The time for smart gardens in our homes, and vertical farms in our cities has arrived.

Key Resarch findings:

• Vertical farming will see a global CAGR of 25% in the coming years
• Smart gardens, self-watering pots and home hydoroponics will experience a global CAGR of 5% to 10%.
• "The Filipino Dream" shows BGC-based Filipinos want health security (58% of 1,484 surveyed) and expect better wellness (79%). This suggests a growing demand for healh and sustainability products.

Amazon US sales

A quick look at a random sample of 8 smart gardens products on Amazon.com shows 6300 units sold every month, and $454,527 in monthly sales volume. These figures are already stunning for 8 products, and it's clear there are hundreds, if not thousands on the market.

So the US market is definitely very vibrant. Home Hydroponics products have very significantly gained traction, and a strong faithful customer base in the US.

The problem with smart gardens

Hydroponic units with which the plants are directly placed in the reservoir are known as using the "Kratky Method", also known as the "Dutch Bucket". This, in our opinion, leads to impracticalities:

• The device is bulky, potentially eating up prime surface real estate in the home.
• The plants are too densely packed, leading to overcrowding of the plants and the roots.
• The reservoir doesn't hold enough H2O, requiring more refills, and reducing its ability to stabilize water temperatures, leading to more stressed plants.
• Devices cannot be connected to each other, making them hard to scale coherently.

Our view is these drawbacks restrict this product to a somewhat hardcore niche.

The solutions to these problems are:

• Using NFT channels, that are much slimmer, space saving and aesthetic.
• Giving the plants more space.
• Using a large reservoir, that also acts as a box for shipping.
• Making the units fully modular, so the garden can be scaled.

Using NFT channels, that are much slimmer, space saving and aesthetic.

As we can see, the slimmer profile means the units can comfortably stay at the back of a desk. The LEDs mean the units can also double as desk lamps.

The units are also slim enough for:

• Shelves
• Wardrobes
• Kitchen counters
• Fridge tops
• etc.

Using a large reservoir, that also acts as a box for shipping.

The reservoir moves this product from the gimmick category to serious grower category. The reservoir leads to several advantages:

• Only needs to be refilled once or twice a month.
• The cascading water leads to excellent aeration of the H2O.
• The large volume of water acts as a better H2O temperature stablizer.

Making the units fully modular, so the garden can be scaled.

The units are fully modular. So more units can be added in a "plug and play" style with very little effort.