Reel Gardening
Claire Reid
STARTUP COSTS: ‘I received an R800 000 loan at 5.5% interest from Anglo Zimele, a small-business startup fund. I also tried to do everything I could with the help of friends and family.’
TURNOVER: ‘We are now fully profitable and scaling up quite rapidly. We produced 20 million seed kits for a garden campaign in 2020, which saw us moving into a whole new income bracket. We also have two production facilities.’
When Claire was 16, her parents agreed to buy vegetables from her if she managed to grow them in the family’s garden. Battling to figure out which seed to use and failing to get it to stay in the ground sparked the idea for what would eventually become a patented biodegradable seed reel that can be planted straight in the ground and saves on water. Ten years later, Reel Gardening also manufactures various other products and has a broader purpose to get households and schools to grow their own food.
What are the benefits of using the seed reel?
The paper tape contains seeds that haven’t been chemically treated, placed at the correct distance apart and anchored at the correct depth for optimum germination. The tape biodegrades over a sixweek period, adding extra nutrients to the soil; it also prevents birds and insects from eating the seeds. It indicates exactly where the seeds will sprout, allowing for easy weeding and localised watering. The tape is packaged as the Reel Gardening Grow Pod or Garden
in a Box. Each box contains tape for five different vegetables and three companion plants to build the eco-system around the garden and prevent pests.
How did you turn your idea into a fully f ledged sustainable product?
I entered a science project in the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists when I was 16. It won a gold medal and caught the attention of Ronnie Kasrils, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry at the time. He asked me to do some tests on how much water the tape saved, and suggested I enter the SA Youth Water Prize competition. I did so and was asked to represent SA in Sweden, where I won the Stockholm Junior Water Prize. I got a bursary from Water Affairs and Forestry, and obtained my master’s in Architecture. While working as an intern at a firm that designs mine housing, I learnt about Anglo Zimele, which gave me a loan to start my business.
Who benefits most from your products?
Anyone who wants a vegetable garden but needs assistance. We reach these customers through our online shop and others like Faithful to Nature, Greenlight, Nifty Gifts and Yuppiechef, as well as bricksand-mortar stores like Builders. We also work with donors who want to sponsor school and community gardens. The tape can be printed on, so it’s ideal for cause-related marketing campaigns and corporate gifts. We’ve created branded products for the likes of Discovery and Nando’s.
You describe your business as a social enterprise...
By empowering people to grow their own food, Reel Gardening hopes to address food insecurity, malnutrition, and poor education around the importance of fresh vegetables. Our Learn and Grow Kits – which enable teachers to use a vegetable garden as a teaching tool – have been implemented in 2 500 schools; and we got 400 m2 feeding gardens going in 300 schools. To date, we’ve donated more than 1 million metres of seed tape to nearly 3 000 school gardens.
What’s next?
In the next three to five years, through the provision of Gardens in a Box and access to gardening knowledge, Reel Gardening hopes to have capacitated 1 million households to grow their own food.