Water Hyacinth Floating Garden

Prek Toal, a floating village in the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia, is at about one hour by boat from the land, obliging its inhabitants, mainly fishermen, to buy fruits and vegetables that are transported by boat to the village, and thus are sold at a higher price to the families living there. This project aims at offering to those villagers the possibility to cultivate fruits and vegetables locally, to empower their autonomy and food security, through the implementation of a specific hydroponics which consists of using invasive water hyacinth aquatic plants as a fertile sustrate to produce diverse fruits and vegetables.

Answering several aims: sanitary (by filling nutrient deficiencies), environmental (by using a nocive and invasive plant that is overabundant on the Tonle Sap lake, as the main material for the floating garden), socio-cultural (through trainings and the transmission of skills and know-how) and economical (by developing new sources of income for the families), this community floating garden would allow to implement and experiment a technique from Bangladesh in the context of Prek Toal floating village, and train its families so as to enable them to create their own personal floating garden.

We set up a collaborative methodology with several local NGOs, the villagers and the Bangladeshi experts, in order to design a community floating garden that would protect the floating water hyacinth-based substrates and the cultures, and offer a permanent and social place for the families to meet, learn and interact. Since the inception workshop in December 2022 and the beginning of the experiments, the villagers were able to buy local and affordable vegetables thanks to the water-haycinth floating garden. Groups of children have participated to practical workshop and were able to bring back home their own production. Some families were trained, and are currently implementing their own small floating garden.

The community floating garden allows the villagers of Prek Toal to appropriate and adapt a specific technique to their own usages and needs, fostering an iterative process, it is still being used and will continue to evolve according to the experiments and outcomes. It was initiated in 2019 and realized in collaboration with Osmose association, Dr Haseeb Md Irfanullah, Sonia Shahid, Different De Architects, the GRET organization.

— Awarded Seoul Design Award 2024 – Best of the Best Creativeness & Innovation (KR)
— Awarded by the AMP Sustainable Project Prize 2023 / Environment Category
— Project supported by AMP program, SST Foundation, dB'Human foundation, the Wildlife Conservation Society