An inspiring visit yesterday to see progress on Johana Hartwig’s Idea Fund project based in Cardiff Bay.

Johana is exploring how her city could find ways to feed itself utilising a kind of hydroponic system, grown on the waste discarded in the Bay. Since receiving our fund award at the end of March, Johana has collected a range of waste from the bay and explored which of the random bits and pieces could be used to construct an aesthetic, floating, reasonably robust structure. She then planted a diversity of edible plants to see if they would grow on her first experimental platform in such an environment.

On a mini tour through her process, Johana first showed us some of the waste foam, plastic containers, branches, twigs, ropes and twine collected and her techniques for creating a workable structure from these including the necessary buoyancy. It raises interesting questions as to what environmentally questionable materials it’s “ok” to put back in the water to use again and how well will they will withstand the elements and wildlife.

It was great to see how the edible plants (herbs, cucumber, tomatoes, kale and edible flowers) had all flourished despite never bring watered during months of almost drought conditions here in South Wales. The tour finished with us consuming herb tea made from our own pick from the floating plants together with some herb infused chocolates made by Johana.

Part of Johana’s motive is to stimulate conversation about growing edible plants in the heart of a city using water that is already there. She’s especially interested in the potential of the large areas of fresh water in the historic, now unused docks. We look forward to seeing what happens next. You can follow Johana’s journey here.