Green thumbs up for Stujardin and the Green Wall Trimmer

Do you remember our tips about how to greenify your room? We hope you all bought the IKEA Socker! :) Well, it seems we’re not the only ones bitten by the gardening bug. Nowadays, city gardening is a hot topic at the University of Ghent. 

As you’ve probably noticed, the two sustainable student organizations Stujardin and Campus Zuid kept a little garden at the UFO the last two weeks. In the coming weeks, Stujardin also organizes various informative ‘growth evenings’ about city gardening, like an excursion to the kitchen gardens at De Site (27/3), a search for edible plants in the city (17/4) and a speed date with gardening experts (7/5). Moreover, tomorrow is the grand opening of the vegetable garden at the faculty of bio-engineers, where Stujardin will inform you about how and when students can work in the garden. So if you have green thumbs, you should definitely go!

With city gardening being such a hot topic, it is not a big surprise that the winning invention of  ‘De klimaatfiksers’ responds to this trend. ‘De klimaatfiksers’ is a competition organized by Ecocampus that challenges students to come up with a CO2-reducing innovation on account of Dikke Truiendag. The winning concept is the Green Wall Trimmer, designed by five students of Industrial Engineering at the Hogent. As its name already gives away, The Green Wall Trimmer makes it possible to trim vertical gardens on high walls. A green wall has a lot of advantages: it helps reduce particulates in the air, isolates the building, leads to more biodiversity in the city and has a positive psychological effect on the citizens. Does a city with green walls still sound a little futuristic to you? On the 17^th and 18^th of April, the five students will present their work and resolve all your doubts at the innovative show ECOnext in Antwerp Expo.

Kaat and Elise