THE PROBLEM

As a kid living in the city, Nguyen, our founder, assumed food came from the supermarket. When she went overseas for high school, living on a ranch in country Arizona, she had the opportunity to grow food daily and form an unbreakable bond with gardening. For Nguyen, nothing could compare to fresh homegrown tomatoes!

Coming to Melbourne, Nguyen realised that the connection between children and the food system is fading over generations. Urban kids nowadays have no concept of how fruits or vegetables come from the ground, yet they will not be able to respect, connect or even consume the vegetables.

Many external factors could contribute to the degraded relationship between children and food. First, parents’ limited knowledge of food or the lack of time and skills to prepare healthy meals for children in Australian households leads them to unfamiliar fresh food like vegetables or fruits. Furthermore, many children did not achieve the recommended daily vegetable intake as a result of their poor connection with food.

THE SOLUTION

Introduce Plante, a service startup with the mission to help kids understand food through sustainable gardening. Through implementing innovative technologies, we aim to give families a simple and compelling gardening experience. We believe growing your own food can help children integrate healthier eating habits.

Our team dreams of living in a world where everyone can have a green thumb, as well as the ability to produce and harvest vegetables from their own garden, regardless of where they live or how much knowledge they have about gardening. Plante brings fresh vegetables closer to your homes, from miles to feet. We aim to incorporate greens into living spaces for about one-quarter of the world’s urban population.

THE ASK