April 2020 - Joburg North

A bright pink sign hangs outside
Claire Reid’s office, bearing a quote
from Robert Brault: ‘Why try explaining
miracles to your kids when you can just
have them plant a garden.’
It’s a philosophy she subscribes
to wholeheartedly. As the brains
behind Reel Gardening, she’s seen
first-hand that planting can teach
you about food production, health,
mental wellness, body image and a
connection with the earth – so it’s not
surprising that her heart rejoices when
her four-year-old son, Connor, runs to
check his latest harvest as soon as he’s
home from school.
This is very different from her own
childhood where, she says,
her own garden was ‘lush,
but not loved’. What her
parents lacked in green
fingers, however, they made
up for in entrepreneurial
insight. ‘My parents believed
that if you wanted pocket
money, you had to earn
it – but not by doing the
usual chores, which should
be taken care of anyway.
You had to do something
that would add value.’
Consequently, by the time
she was 15. Claire had
developed rather enviable
acumen – which was when
she had the idea for Reel
Gardening.
It was at the time when
organic food first became
a buzz word, she recalls.
‘My parents told me they’d
buy all my produce, if I started a food
garden,’ she says. Having learnt the
importance of managing input costs
from her past endeavors, she set out
to measure the available space, then
went to the nursery – where the
sheer variety and inscrutability of the
seed section left her stymied. ‘I didn’t
understand anything. Which variety
would be best for my little urban
garden? Which would grow fastest?
What was the difference between a
Floradade tomato and a Roma?’ Nor
did the assistant provide much help –
she seemed to think that as a packet
of seeds cost only R10, it didn’t really
matter how many germinated.
26 Get It Joburg Northern Suburbs April 20
Overwhelmed but determined, Claire
started by marking spaces of one
centimetre on her fingers, so she
would know where each seed should
be planted. But her attempt was a
disaster. ‘Seeds stuck to my fingers,
rather than the soil. Disheartened, I
asked our helper, Meggie, for advice.’
Claire was astounded to find that the
usually supportive Meggie had no wise
words for her this time, because she’d
met with her own crop catastrophes
when trying to start a food garden at
her home in Rustenburg.
For Meggie, the stakes had been
higher, though – with no running
water at her house, she’d carried a full
five litre bucket to her homestead
Miracle
in a box
Take one entrepreneurial teen, add water –
and seed, some newspaper and a whole lot
of inspiration. The result? Reel Gardening
seed tape, a gardening revolution.
every day, patiently sprinkling the
crops with water that could otherwise
be used for cooking or washing. She
was overjoyed when it looked as if
the first seeds had sprouted – only to
eventually discover the plants she’d
so carefully tended with such dearly
husbanded resources, were weeds.
‘That got me thinking – imagine if
there were a way to place seeds the
correct distance apart and to tell
which seeds were germinating so
you didn’t waste water on those that
weren’t,’ Claire says. She experimented
with placing seeds inside strips of
newspaper – and the system worked
so well that first Meggie’s neighbours,
then her mother’s book club friends,
demanded some of her ‘tape’.
When Claire entered this first iteration
of Reel Gardening into the Eskom
Expo, it did more than win the SA
Youth Water Prize – it also brought
her to the attention of then Minister
of Water Affairs and Forestry, Ronnie
Kasrils, who asked if he could partner
her with a University of Pretoria
professor to see how the seeded tape
could save water. When tests showed a
water saving of up to 80 per cent in the
germination phase, Claire was invited
to take her innovation to Stockholm,
where she beat a host of university
students and became the first African
to win the Stockholm Junior Prize in
Water Week.
‘I was incredibly excited.
This was a simple idea that
had massive potential.
Gardening had taught me
how much goes into food
production, and I realised
if other people knew this,
they’d be less likely to
throw away a vegetable just
because it has a black spot
on it. I thought this could
be a real solution for people
like Meggie, who’d be able
to ease their overstretched
budgets if they could grow
their own food,’ Claire says.
Even so, the idea of setting
up a formal business was
parked while Claire pursued
her studies in architecture
which, although not directly
related to her would-be
venture, taught her valuable lessons in
systems thinking, which she maintains
is essential for sound business practice.
While she was working as an intern
on an Anglo American mine housing
project, Claire revived the idea –
and the company was sufficiently
impressed to offer her a loan from the
Anglo American Zimele Small Business
Fund to get started.
So it was that Claire and Sean,
her husband, found themselves
researching everything from paper
to glue and seeds, finding the very
best in each category to create Reel
Gardening. Today, it’s a product highly
sought after by corporates looking for