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Have you ever seen a standing garden? Plants shooting upright from a bunch of PVC pipes using the latest technology to code a watering system.

This contraption was designed by the students at ITZ'AT STEAM Academy who entered the Ministry Of Agriculture's School Garden Competition in partnership with the National Agriculture Trade Show. It took about 3 weeks to build and today the students showed us why they were recognized for their innovation, technology and regenerative design from a total of 12 schools.

Bryan Garcia, Student
"The name of the project is a vertical garden. As you can see it is vertical like a skyscraper and what we had planted is a different variety of household items used mostly. Like tomatoes, cilantros and herbs and cucumbers so yes."

Reporter
"Were there any challenges you guys faced in putting this together?"

Bryan Garcia, Student
"Yes we did face many challenges to be honest, first we started by transplanting because some of the seeds did not grow and did die and some of them managed to survive. The pipe leaked sometimes but we managed to get the right size and manage to like you know. Also we didn't have water to put in here so we had to find a way to pump water through these pipes so water can come up here and go to the little plants so yes."

Jahzhia Morales, Student
"So this is a micro bit and the coding software that we use is Microsoft make code and this took a while to code a day maybe to figure out all the elements."

Reporter
"And what does it do."

Jahzhia Morales, Student
"This detects the moisture of the soil so there is a little display at the front so if it doesn't detect any it will show zero and start beeping."

Their teacher says that due to the lack of space on campus to construct a normal garden, they had to get creative and do some research as to how they could make a vertical garden work.

Lionel Palacio, KLA Teacher, ITZ' AT STEAM Academy
"We have about eight or 10 kids working on it. They came up with the design knowing that we did not have a lot of space on Campus and so we noticed that we had to go we have different concepts. This is almost the final part of it. We are still working on it into a larger scale and working on the technology aspect of it as well. The experience was really awesome having the kids build this and do the measurements and learning how it works putting it together maintaining the soil maintaining the plants and all of this it is the students work. Also Ms Jasmine mentioned she learned how to do the recording so it can detect when the system needs water. the system runs on its own. It is sustainable sustainable. It has a reservoir that pumps the water whenever it signals that it is getting dry or whenever there is a certain time of the day that it needs to be watered it works itself."

The School Garden Competition is part of the 2024 National Agriculture and Trade Show. Schools across Belize participated and in the Primary School Competition, San Victor R.C.S in the Corozal District won first place and San Antonio United Pentecostal in the Cayo District won second place. In the High School Competition, Valley of Peace SDA Academy in the Cayo district won first place and second place went to Belize High School of Agriculture from Trinidad Village in Orange Walk.

Additionally, two schools were recognized for Innovation, Technology and Regenerative Agriculture. The winning schools are Escuela Secundaria Tecnica México in the Corozal District and Itz'at Steam Academy from the Belize District.