Community garden located in a local organic farm

Lohas Organic Farm

date 2009

In 2009 a green living mentor and a group of social workers have established The Lohas Organic Farm in Hong Kong, where a community garden is also present inside the farm. The farm runs under Gingko House, which is a local NGO that promotes senior employment.

The Lohas Organic farm is around 200,000 square metres and is located in New Territories, Hong Kong, where it is situated inside a local village (Cheung Lek Village) and is surrounded by low-density houses in Shueng Shui. The Farm is 10 minutes road distance away from the Sheung Shui train station (MTR), making the farm easily accessible for city dwellers. Because of this accessibility, the community garden is also seen as a getaway for busy city residents to spend time with their families in a green atmosphere.

Image: Lohas Organic Farm (permission pending)

Through the organic farm, the NGO and the establishers aim to promote the local farming market, as well as organic farming and green living. With the community garden available from the farm, the owners hope to further educate citizens in Hong Kong about organic farming and the value of nature. To join the community garden, people can rent a 100 square feet farmland for one season with 980HKD and plant crops in that designated plot land. There will also be mentors to educate people about agriculture knowledge and guide people through farming techniques such as using organic fertilizers and organic pest control methods. The staff from the farm also irrigates the rented plots regularly, so that busy renters will not need to go to the community garden frequently to irrigate their crops.

Apart from the community garden, the farm also provides services such as the “self-picking” program, where visitors pay an entrance fee of 20HKD to go in the farm and pick out organic crops they would like to buy, providing a mean for people to leisurely pick out fresh harvests from a wide range of organic crops. The produces from the farm are also supplied to Gingko House’s restaurants in the city centre, allowing the knowledge of organic farming and the value of nature to be further projected to a wider range of people, and allowing local farming business to be further promoted as well.