Phytodrift – Floating Treatment Garden

This Design + Change project focuses on a regenerative approach to farming and its consequences. Eutrophication is a growing problem in aquatic ecosystems, driven largely by nutrient runoff from agriculture, a deep-seated anthropogenic issue.

Through redesigning Floating Gardens on waterbodies that consume excess nutrients, this project envisions a holistic future where even contradicting needs can be met. Providing the space for humans to cultivate crops while allowing the aquatic ecosystem to regain its strength.

What is a Phytodrift – Floating Treatment Garden?

Essentially, a Phytodrift is a platform used to grow vegetables while filtering the water of excess nutrients. The platform is created with woodchips as a substrate, which are held together by a jute sack and surrounded by plastic bottles for flotation. The garden is placed on a waterbody. On this platform, plants are grown. Their roots hold onto the substrate and reach through the bottom of the platform into the water below. Gaining their essential nutrients from the lake water, the vegetables grow and can be consumed after harvesting.

What are the benefits of  a Phytodrift – Floating Treatment Garden?

Clean water is one of humanity’s most vital needs, yet algal blooms caused by eutrophication plague lakes and seas globally. Nitrogen and phosphorus are the main culprits behind this phenomenon. One of the main reasons they end up in waterbodies is due to runoff from agricultural productions where they are used as fertilizers (Johansson and Schmieder 2024). Interestingly, because these nutrients are essential for plant growth, cultivating plants on waterbodies can filter nitrogen from the water.

This practice of planting on floating beds in waterbodies to reduce their nutrient content is often referred to as Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTWs). Usually, native plants are used to achieve this filtration effect (Choudhury et al. 2024). However, what if we could additionally have the benefit of being able to grow vegetables on them, satisfying two needs in one? That is the idea of Phytodrift.

This project challenges the conventional capitalistic way of profit by expanding the definition of value beyond money. By aligning human and ecological needs, it demonstrates how we can profit from nature in non-exploitative ways, gaining cleaner water, healthier food, and stronger communities rather than just financial returns.

The materials used here are surplus, like jute bags from coffee roasteries and woodchips from the forest Industry, as well as plastic bottles that form the border of the floating islands.

This project features multiple layers of design, one of them is a Guide. The reason I wanted to design a Guide was to make creating a Floating Treatment Garden as accessible to everyone as possible. The guide provides a way to recreate a Phytodrift using little to no money and keeping it as sustainable as possible. Further there are also step-by-step instructions with pictures: https://www.instructables.com/Phytodrift-Floating-Treatment-Garden/ published on Instructables a Platform for sharing DIY-Projects

My highlight of this project was that it did not stay speculative design; after many unanswered emails, I finally got permission to put Phytodrifts on Lake Trummen. This made them a tangible structure rather than an abstract system. Phytodrifts could be and are realized in Society. Seeing them in front of you makes the design much more powerful.

This special moment of the realization of the Project is such an important part of my Design and the Vision I am trying to create for the future world, I had to share that moment. Hence I designed an Opening Ceremony.

During the event, I held an opening speech, I planted the previously grown seedlings into the Phytodrifts along with my participants, and finally let them float into Lake Trummen.

An excerpt from the opening speech goes as follows; 

“This is a special moment in my Project and an important part of the vision I am trying to create for the future world. A world that encourages care for the ecosystem surrounding us, and makes that not only accessible but also fruitful.”

The opening ceremony was a touchpoint for stakeholders who might not have seen the project otherwise, but the continued use of Phytodrifts on the lake creates a lasting point of contact. A touchpoint that many people will come across during their daily lives. That opened up the potential of a new target group: Passerbys. People on a walk through nature, someone biking around the lake, different age groups enjoying the sun, all of them, when crossing the red bridge on Lake Trummen, will come across the Phytodrifts in the lake. For them to not only see them but be able to understand what and why they are on Lake Trummen, I created this sign:

Looking back, the main goal of this project was always to bring this motivation for caring about the world we live in and the oceans and waterbodies we thrive on. I wanted people to feel the change they made, not to reach a monetary goal or fulfill a chore, but to feel the tangible impact of their actions through the plants as an embodiment of their nurture and care. These goals may not have been achieved entirely, but that was never within the scope of my project, however, I would like to say that it did have an impact and will continue to have an impact as the vegetables grow and the gardens float on Lake Trummen.

References

Johansson, Mats, and Nina Schmieder. 2024. “Algae Blooms Have Arrived in the Baltic Sea.” WWF Baltic, June 27, 2024. https://www.wwfbaltic.org/newsroom/marine/algae-blooms-have-arrived-in-the-baltic-sea.

Choudhury, Maidul I., Mikk Espenberg, Marc M. Hauber, Kuno Kasak, Mihkel Maddison, Anu Ostonen, Ülo Mander, and Samuel Hylander. 2024. “Application of Floating Beds Constructed with Woodchips for Nitrate Removal and Plant Growth in Wetlands.” Water, Air, & Soil Pollution 235: 493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-024-07275-2.

Additional materials

Step-by-step Instructions: https://www.instructables.com/Phytodrift-Floating-Treatment-Garden/ 

Guide: Final_Guide_Phytodrift

Pattern: Pattern

Instagram: @phytodrift

Pictures by: Miguel Ferreira, Anja Borsan, Lissy Schneider