How does your garden grow?

What if you could take a tried-and-true concept, one that’s been practiced for centuries and kept civilizations alive, and turn it around completely, so that nothing is as it was, and a complete paradigm shift is required to adjust to the new reality?

The brilliant minds behind the VerticalField concept, which originated in Raanana, Israel, have done just that. They’ve taken the concept of field farming and literally flipped it on its head. You no longer need to own a large — or even small — plot of land to be able to plant and grow crops. All it takes is a wall, or space for a pod — a 20- or 40-foot self-enclosed farm that has all the technology built into it to grow hundreds of crop varieties.

A Vertical Farm was installed at Evergreen Kosher Market in Monsey, New York, this past summer, delighting customers with the stunning visual of walls of herbs and greens. Glass walls enable shoppers to peer into the sterile environment and watch their greens grow, aided by precise LED lights that provide the perfect blend of intensity and color to yield the best output using minimum electricity. Irrigation, fertilization, and temperature systems are controlled via a sophisticated app, enabling the garden to continue to yield crops even through the brutally cold days of a northern winter, and without the need for a trained horticulturist on staff. And happy customers walk out with freshly picked herbs and greens that are about to take the first road trip of their lives.

Why Go Vertical?

The benefits of vertical gardening are numerous. In crowded cities amongst the urban sprawl, these green walls are a breath of fresh air when you need it most. In neighborhood grocery stores, the self-contained gardens give new meaning to “locally sourced,” grown within a few hundred feet of your supermarket’s cash register — and picked and placed in your shopping cart hours, or minutes, later!