At Applant, we're aiming to empower all people to grow by providing not only the tools, such as aTree, but the knowledge and the resources to do so anywhere! aTree is a vertical garden that grows fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in homes, offices, and more, all year round!

Plants grow on a vertical garden bed, where they're suspended on top of one another up aTree's trunk, where their roots are exposed to a mist-like environment. With the science of aeroponics, nutrient-rich water is delivered directly to the roots of your plants, all whilst using 95% less water and encouraging substantial growth.

It's a low-maintenance, self-watering solution to growing plants and produce through urban agriculture! aTree already uses less water than traditional farming methods but also grows everything 3x faster and up to 20-30% larger! So, if you think that is nifty, just wait... aTree is also a close-looped, zero-waste system! It brings natural light and fresh air to any environment whilst empowering people to embrace nature and give back to our world!

"We need to start thinking about the Future of Food if we are going to feed 9 billion people in a way that does not destroy our environment." - Bill Gates

First, let us explain WHY we’re doing this. Food is one of the most important elements in our lives. We all crave it, we all need it, but right now our world is facing some serious issues because of it. Not only that, we're also facing issues with the environment, as well as our health. Even for well-informed people, it’s sometimes difficult, even impossible, to know exactly where it is our food is coming from, how it’s handled, or even what’s added to it. Food scarcity is a huge problem, especially in our cities, where many households with children don’t even know where their next meal is coming from!

In just 33 years, we're expected to be home to 33% more people on Earth. That's an additional 2.2 billion mouths to feed! As of now, 50% of our world's trees are gone, and by 2030, we may have only 10% of our natural rainforests left due to deforestation. In the past 40 years, Earth has lost a third of its arable land due to erosion and pollution. We are destroying our own home before our very eyes.

Demands for food are beginning to increase, access to land is beginning to decrease, and we're running out of time.

We're reaching a tipping point. Technology makes growing food in urban environments, in spaces once deemed 'unusable' very simple and possible. And while we do face a serious crisis, there is a solution - aTree. But, we must act now, bold and united, to create an independent food system that helps us, as well as the world. 

We can no longer rely on politicians and corporations - we can grow our own food!

aTree harnesses the miracle of aeroponic technology, but more on that later... Nutrient-rich water is delivered directly to your plants' root structures. One notable aspect about aTree is the practical foot pump we've added to the base of the unit. Water rains down through aTree's trunk, wetting your plants' root structures with the help of a gravity-fed drip method, in turn, promoting sufficient, healthy plant growth!

By using the foot pump at the base of the unit, water and oxygen travel back up the trunk, through the process of aeration, until it comes back down through again. This healthy cycle helps your plants develop faster, and without the risks of, A, overwatering, and B, developing root rot!

In soil, plants' roots have to dig through and search for their nutrients, be at the mercy of insects and weeds and soil-borne diseases, as well as battle against other roots for its sustenance, all while attempting to gather energy from the sun to grow from above. With aTree, your plants' roots are placed in their own specific space, protected from all of those other nasties, where they're free to grow as long and wild as they wish. Since the nutrients are delivered directly to them, they don't have to spend energy searching for them. And with that energy saved, guess where it goes? You guessed it, it goes towards... GROWING! UP!

You don't need any previous growing experience. It's that simple!

Plant Seedlings

There are 30 trunk spaces along aTree's trunk for plants to be added.

Refill Weekly

Top aTree up with nutrient-rich water when needed. Depending on the plants, aTree will need around 20 litres a week.

Pump Daily

Pumping aTree for at least 1-2 minutes a day will ensure optimal water flow for plants.

Harvest

When ready, pull the plants from their net pots and enjoy the fruits and veg of your labour. (Tip: leave the roots connected so that your plants stay alive longer)

Now, what is aeroponics, you ask? Aeroponics is a subset of hydroponics - a method of growing plants without soil. Did you know that plants don't actually need soil to grow? It may sound strange, but growing aeroponically yields crucial advantages over traditional methods of growing with soil. The process of aeroponics involves leaving your plants' root structures suspended in the air. The roots are then sprayed with a fine coat of nutrient-enriched solution, promoting healthier growth than any other method of growing, all without the drawbacks of soil-grown plants and produce!

We set out to create an optimal environment for plants to grow by providing them with the right amount of water-to-air ratio, periodically feeding plant roots by raining nutrient-rich water solution down aTree's trunk.

aTree establishes an entirely new standard in water usage, reducing water fall by atomising water into tiny particles that is easily absorbed by plant roots.

With aTree, we will empower millions of people to take ownership over their food, save thousands of gallons of water per year, and sustantially reduce their overall environmental impact.

aTree is designed for versatility in more than just urban environments, but for any environment! And more, it's designed and functional for any age, with any amount of growing knowledge. You'll learn to love and love to learn how to grow with aTree - we guarantee it. One of the best features is being able to create your own mini ecosystem, controlling the growing seasons just like Mother Nature.

It's perfect for high-density areas, confined spaces, and landlocked living conditions; however, whilst easily accessible and portable, you can grow both indoors and outdoors with absolute ease. Let your little greens enjoy a day out under the sun by the patio, up on the rooftop, or perhaps the balcony. If you're stuck for space, let aTree sit by a nice, open window, or take advantage of our excellent indoor growing capabilities! With state-of-the-art LED hang branches, your plants can absorb optimal light in any living condition!

Pledging is great. It makes you feel warm inside, it supports us, our ideas, and our mission, and it grants you access to some of the cool rewards offered above! But, what really sets aTree apart is its profound and timely return on YOUR investment.

Using the lowest produce prices offered by a major supermarket chain as the basis for comparison, we were able to calculate the potential monetary value from six months of yield using aTree to grow...

...the cost of buying and growing produce for only six months using a single aTree unit was determined to be $692.00 and was inclusive of the aTree unit itself, the shipping costs, the seedlings, the nutrient mix, and the utilities. Within the unit, we grew the following crops during the warm-weather growing season:

The results of this study determined that the total value of these yields over six months came to a total of $796.00, a total already exceeding the initial outlay and ongoing running costs of aTree. Given that the initial costs associated with the unit are a one-time expense, the total cost per yield will only continue to decrease over time!

Not even factored into this study were indirect savings on things such as trips to the supermarket and waste from store-bought produce. This is without mentioning the savings for the Earth that we mentioned earlier!

• Uses 95% less water than traditional gardening methods
• Plants grow up to 3x faster
• Plants grow up to 30% larger
• Indoor and outdoor usability
• Self-watering
• Year-round crop production in the right environment
• No soil-borne pests or diseases, meaning less reliance on pesticides
• Hyperlocal food production

We have brought together a team of passionate, devoted individuals that are excited to undertake such a long and arduous journey to steer the future and create a better world. With a headstrong team, a plethora of wonderful partners bestowing guidance and aid, and a range of amazing supporters, we know we will achieve our goals!

It's going to take a lot of time, a lot of work, and a lot of persistence, but it will be a journey worth it so that we can learn and grow and become a better, stronger team. One of our blessings is our team, working in perfect harmony, and that will be the backbone of us delivering on what we promise to our backers and supporters!

Supporting us in this endeavour means you're voting for change. You're voting for your food to become a more sustainable food network, where communities can come together and share. These networks will decentralise control of our food supply in a manner that does not have a high cost on the Earth. That, and it will instead help us learn to grow, contribute, and come together again.

The idea behind Applant is not only to grow but to change our consumption patterns and, ultimately, do more with less. This is all about empowering people to control their food needs, with a little guidance as required.

We aim to be the conversation starter on how we can do things better, the reason people want to begin to change their communities and, more importantly, their own behaviours for the better. By providing seeds, nutrients, recipes, gardening tools and more, we can empower humanity to once again adopt a more community-based approach to farming - just how farming was originally intended when the revolution first began.

Prototype after prototype, we were obsessed with learning how we could grow plants better. We knew we could, so we went back to the drawing board and got to work and built aTree up to where it is today. We designed a vertical garden that flowed seamlessly, with an urban design, with easily integrated LED grow branches that could grow 30 plants at a time! While the unit itself is extremely simple to use, the technology behind it is far from simple.

The material used to build aTree is polycarbonate. Where we have applied UV-stabilisers for aTree to withhold tough environments. We've engineered aTree to provide the ideal amount of nutrients and oxygen for plants' root structures at all times.

At Applant, we have large, audacious goals...

1. Vertical gardens for urban households
Planting aTree in urban households will set a trend for a new way to grow food and become self-sustainable. It will become the beginning of restoring our broken food system, as well as living healthier and smarter.

2. Vertical gardens for urban community farms
While we understand that not everybody can afford an aTree unit, we wish to create urban community farms so that everybody can grow together, bringing people and resources together, strengthening our communities.

3. Self-reliant food systems that operate on alternative energy
By creating an autonomous, self-reliant food system, we can alleviate the many burdens that prevent us from growing food locally. This can allow us, as a whole, to shift our attention towards other necessary tasks. It all begins with the tools, the resources, and the knowledge.

...by achieving these 3 goals, we believe a world of change could come about by growing food where we eat. By creating independent food systems, we can stand by our tribes, allowing wildlife to return to their natural states, save lives, create a greener world, and a greater future!

We’ve designed aTree to stand up against the test of time. It’s a step above the average hydroponic system that generally uses styrofoam, non-food grade plastics, and other materials. Our plastic is top-of-the-line, food-grade plastic made from polycarbonate. It’s BPA-free, the best AGDA-approved plastic that money can buy!

Will the plastic break down in the sun, you ask? If it did, it would break down as a result of leaching, not structural integrity, so we took every step to ensure that this does not happen. We’ve invested in double UV-stabilisers to protect the plastic from breaking down or leaching so aTree will last a lifetime. We’ve also gone above and beyond with opaque plastic, which helps keep your plants' root structures cooler, any algae accumulation at a minimal, a unit that reflects light back towards your plants, and keeps the inside-heating and breaking levels down.

We're a team of enthusiastic visionaries that see a world where people aren't denied access to food... a world where our environment can thrive as we do... a world where communities are brought together for a noble cause...

...a world that is possible with aTree.

By sowing the seeds of change today, we can reap the rewards of a grander future not just for us but for the future generations. We can be remembered as the generation that changed the way food was cultivated and eaten.

By growing today, we can secure a greater tomorrow and safeguard the future - but we can only do it together.

Let's start growing up together.

Thank you.

Risks and challenges

We stand for value, quality, and growth, but we'd like to move forward with an air of transparency also. Applant has a team with extensive manufacturing experience and involvement.

PROJECT BENEFITS

We've got a history of designing and manufacturing quality products in-house. That being said, we're proud to announce that aTree is the result of considerably detailed planning. To get the ball rolling, we've previously designed and manufactured the aTree garden.

Despite our expertise and careful planning, there will always be risks to the project. We’ve identified and outlined the following key risks to our project below:

INJECTION MOULDING

Injection moulding is the process that can often set hardware projects back. We’re fortunate to have experience in injection moulding, but in the event that there is a problem with the injection moulding process, our project could be set back several weeks.

EXCESSIVE DEMAND

Should we receive support in excess of our anticipated demand, there could be delays in backers receiving their products.

If demand is extraordinary, we could be forced to open a new manufacturing facility, which could further delay our project.

SUPPLY CHAIN

We have long-standing relationships with our suppliers. In addition, we have a very robust supply chain for components. However, it is not impossible that our project could get delayed due to problems with a supplier.

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