Hydroponic Smart Garden
The team builds a garden that grows without soil.
What it is
Teams build a vertical hydroponic garden. In hydroponic growing the soil is replaced by an inert substrate, expanded clay, coconut fibre or rock wool, and the plant is watered with water that has the nutrients dissolved in it.
It needs a grow box and a kit with lamps, tubing and a water pump. We bring the material, and where it makes sense we use salvaged parts.
When it makes sense to choose it
It works well when you want an activity that leaves a working object behind. The garden isn’t a model: once it’s assembled and switched on it carries on growing things, and somebody will have to look after it.
It works well outside a purely corporate setting too, at a Family Day or donated to a school, because children can follow the plants growing and take care of them.
It works less well as a way of burning off energy. You stay still, you assemble and you connect, and the satisfaction comes from understanding how the system holds together.
What it looks like
A video says in thirty seconds what a page explains in a thousand words: how loud it gets, how much laughing there is, what the hands are doing.
How it actually works
You start from understanding the principle, which is less intuitive than it sounds: with no soil, everything the plant needs has to arrive through the water, and the substrate is only there to hold it up. From there the assembly becomes a logical sequence instead of a set of instructions to follow.
Then the teams assemble the structure, set up the pumping system, position the lamps and plant. Growing on several levels uses less space, less water and less ground than a conventional garden, and you can see that by comparing the footprint with what fits inside it.
Three questions
Do you need to know about plants?
No. The principle takes a few minutes to explain and the assembly is guided.
Where does the garden end up?
It stays with you, or it gets donated to a school or a nursery. It’s a choice to make while the day is being designed, because it changes what gets grown.
What can you grow in it?
Table plants and herbs, with controlled production all year round because the environment is enclosed and regulated.
When what surfaces deserves an afterwards
An activity surfaces a great deal about how a team communicates, decides and works together, and sometimes what surfaces deserves more time, more depth and a method. That is where a Team Coaching path can begin: a different road, to be taken only if it is needed, to turn what the day made visible into a new way of working together.
Discover Team Coaching →
Let’s talk about your next team building
You don’t need to have picked a format yet. Tell us what you want your team to take home, how many of you there are and where you’ll be, and we’ll do the rest: within 24 hours you get a considered proposal for your case, with the formats that hold up against your numbers, and what each one leaves the team the day after.
Prefer to talk? +971 50 795 9666 · info @ teambuildingincentive.ae