Development of Edible Vertical Gardening System and Societal Impact of Vertical Gardening through a Systematic Literature Review

Creating buildings under the concept of environmental friendliness has become a very common scenario in the current construction industry, due to many concerns in today’s world. Climate change, Global Warming Potential, high carbon emission, and utilization of natural resources are a few of those concerns. Green designs, eco designs, and zero carbon buildings have been developed as some solutions to the above issues. The most common feature in such buildings are green walls, vertical gardens, living walls etc. Adding the above features to green buildings automatically adds value to them in terms of reducing the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, reducing Sick Building Syndrome (SBS), controlling indoor air quality, adding a pleasing natural environment and many more. There are many types of vertical gardening systems available in different regions of the world addressing their climatic and other country requirements. In Sri Lanka, the importance of such systems has already been identified, but there is a lack of practical applications. As a solution, an innovative vertical gardening system was started to be developed, which meet the needs of the country. Further, the system was developed to plant various vegetables and herbs, targeting the introduction of the system to the public as an edible gardening system. Evaluating the overall performance of the system based on environmental, social, and economic perspectives from the initial stage of research and development of the prototype is one of the targets. This paper presents the prototype edible vertical gardening system and the results of the systematic literature review conducted in order to analyze the societal impact of the innovative vertical gardening system.