Hort@Home

Hort@Home is an extension firm, aimed at creating positive awareness about home gardens in urban areas for better lifestyle.

Background

One of the serious requirements in growing urbanization in India is the propagation of Home Gardening as a hobby/business. Generally, less than 10% of the urban population are involved in home gardening and many do not venture due to lack of knowledge. Apartment life-styles, lack of temporal/spatial requirements for home gardening in construction, Lack of sunlight in the ground level, complete mis-use of terrace spaces where ample sunlight is available and existence of quacks / imposters in any area related to development of home gardens have made this flourishing hobby/ business into a strenuous activity. General assumption is home gardening requires some basic infra-structure. Hence, the knowledge on Horticulture coupled with modern technology has opened newer way of home gardening.

The following passage is about the important need to create a platform to cater to home gardens, orchards, groves, landscapes, bonsai, indoor gardening and urban afforestation. This becomes important because, with an abominable demand in the market for products and services related to this, availability of genuine infrastructure and resources are very limited. The available resources are either a monopoly or are substandard and if they are genuine do not get the required attention due to lack of a suitable medium.

Whilst, it is more important to concentrate on the major chunk in Horticulture, namely orchards, groves, green house and open field vegetables, it is a challenge to address this sector due to inherent difficulties in targeting the end user. Hence the best way to start off the platform for information sharing is through urban folks where interest in home gardens, bonsai, indoor plants, landscapes, Tree farming and vertical gardens is ample. After we have gained competence in our initial activities, we shall proceed to the core horticulture areas of orchards and groves and extend to farming communities. Few examples to the recent developments in home gardening include, seasonal gardening; terrace gardening; Aero Garden; Seed Pad, Plug Grow, Green-wall, vertical farming etc. Although the standard operating procedures for the quoted technologies are available in public, the knowledge on how practically these technologies in the current operational environment can be implemented with the local available material / infrastructure is still lacking. Unfortunately, the academic institutions are yet to drive the student force toward such practical approach(es) and the entrepreneurship in the said domain is minuscule.

This brings the need for a platform, which would disseminate the knowledge on Horticulture, especially in home gardening, wherein the applications are directly beneficial , aiming not only the productivity, but adds the quotient of GNH (Gross National Happiness) among the urban population in large.

Origin of Hort@Home

We introduce a technology platform, known as Hort@Home that aims at disseminating the fundamental Knowledge and recent advancements in Horticulture in a most practical way that suits to urban population of India.

Vision Statement

Popularize the knowledge on practical Horticulture in urban population for a better lifestyle

Governance

The Hort@Home is a module of Offshoot, a

Initially, the webinars; workshops; lectures would be handled through volunteers, while depending on the growth the typical governance structure would be in place as in any NGO/corporates.

Implementation

Following series of actions need to taken. As a branded Medium, this require series of initiatives, for each said area and the following operations need to be initiated to begin with  

1. Identify the actual needs of the end users & define topic for discussion and build the content.
2. Create an NGO or a similar structure with specific managing members.
3. Estimate an initiate capital requirement for a smaller initiative.
4. Assemble sponsorship.
5. A Bank account.
6. Web-site and content – related initiatives.
7. First potential target for presentations.
8. A functional base both in Madras and Coimbatore without major association with TNAU
9. A Facebook account
10. Go - No-go decision chart for the sustainability on operations vis-à-vis sponsorship