Tower gardens: sharing climate-smart solutions in Bangladesh

For families living in Bangladesh's southwest and coastal areas, growing vegetables is becoming increasingly difficult as rising salinity damages farmland. But in Khulna’s Bedkashi, Bina and her husband Sushanta have found a simple yet innovative solution that is helping them grow vegetables for the family as well as earn some extra income by selling them.

Through the Bridges project, Hello Check has been producing practical weather and climate content that helps people adapt to climate change. Here the team visits Bina's home to learn how she builds an affordable tower garden using locally available materials.

"Our area becomes highly saline during the dry season, so we use tower gardens to grow vegetables. It also allows us to produce more vegetables in a very small space," said Bina.

Here we take viewers through each step of this interesting process, showing how this climate-smart farming method enables families to grow vegetables even in highly saline conditions.

Made from bamboo, netting, brick chips, soil and organic fertiliser, a tower garden costs around BDT 400–450 (GBP2.4 to 3) to build, can be easily repaired and lasts for four to five years. A wide range of vegetables including bottle gourd (dudhi), pumpkin, brinjal (aubergine), red amaranth and Malabar spinach can be grown using a tower garden.

Hello Check shares trusted weather and climate information alongside practical adaptation techniques that communities can apply in their daily lives. By turning local knowledge and innovative techniques into accessible, step-by-step guidance, the platform is helping people discover affordable ways to strengthen food security and build resilience in the face of climate change.