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GroTower Photo: RNZ/ GroTowers
Every week we take a look at a unique Kiwi business, and this week we've been hearing about a new way of gardening,
'GroTowers' have been designed by husband and wife team, Clive and Angela for people with limited room for growing plants,
Each is a tower of pots arranged on a base with wheels that stack your garden upwards instead of outwards,
'I love gardening, my veggie gardens are really important to me and I had an idea of a vertical system,' Angela explains, 'there's a lot of people in apartments or units, or elderly people who are maybe in a home but they miss their gardens, so I came up with an idea and drew it out very roughly and showed my husband, I expected 2 weeks later we'd have it all underway but he's redesigned things we've designed new components, I have to apportion a lot of credit to him for designing things properly!'
She says like a lot of small businesses, Covid 19 has hit hard, the company sources a lot of their components from New Zealand but they also bring in components from overseas and a large delay because of lockdowns meant a period of time when GroTowers couldn't be made or sold.
Angela says as they are a small business and have only been up and running for just over a year and half most of the money goes into the product, leaving little extra for marketing.
GroTower Photo: RNZ/ GroTowers
'it has just made a huge difference, it has put GroTowers on the map, it is just phenomenal. We had one post go on earlier on and had quite a good result and then I did another with a video of my little boy who's 6 explaining what mum's GroTowers look like and it just went crazy, thousands of likes, I was sitting at my computer watching the orders come in thinking oh my goodness how are we going to keep up! It was Just fabulous to the point that we don't hold a massive amount of stock because we're new and we're small but we've actually sold out!'
'I think with all the covid stuff thats gone on people want to be a bit more sustainable but also knowing where your foods come from I think is important, it certainly is to us, the cost and the ease of being able to open your door and pick something fresh and eat it that day.'
You can find their website here: www.grotowers.co.nz