Urban Smart Farms: Orlando, Florida

March 19, 2019

A convention center with its own indoor farm? Now that’s a fresh approach to event dining. 🌱

Inside the Westwood Lobby of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, rows of vertical growing towers bring food production into a place better known for exhibitions, conferences and busy event schedules.

Known as the Center-to-Table Gardens, the project was the largest indoor Tower Farm in the world at the time of our original feature. Urban Smart Farms helped manage this growing space, connecting fresh food production with on-site dining and giving visitors a memorable introduction to urban agriculture.

Indoor Tower Farm at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida — The Center-to-Table Gardens bring fresh growing into the convention center.

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🥗 Center to Table 💡 Growing Indoors 🌿 Farm Scale 🤝 Community Impact 📋 Your Farm Project 📚 Continue Learning

From the Lobby to the Kitchen

Fresh ingredients don’t always need a long journey to reach the plate. At the Orange County Convention Center, the growing space is right inside the building.

When Orange County announced the completed gardens in 2016, it described herbs and vegetables grown for meals prepared by Centerplate, the convention center’s food service partner at the time.

A 2020 county report explained how Urban Smart Farms’ on-site farm manager worked with the culinary team to decide which crops to grow and in what quantities. That connection between grower and kitchen is an important part of the story: the harvest was planned around the people using it.

For restaurants, hotels and event venues considering a Tower Farm, the same question belongs near the top of the planning list: what does your kitchen actually need each week?

Growing Fresh Food in an Unexpected Space

A convention center lobby might seem like an unusual place to find lettuce. That’s part of what makes this project memorable!

The gardens use vertical aeroponic growing, arranging plants upward and delivering nutrient solution to their roots without soil. The towers make food production visible to visitors while putting an indoor space to productive use.

Growing indoors also means planning for suitable lighting and environmental conditions. The plants still need care, and someone still needs to handle seeding, transplanting, harvesting and maintenance. A successful indoor farm has a team and a routine behind those lovely green leaves.

Vertical growing towers at Urban Smart Farms inside the Orange County Convention Center — Vertical growing makes the farm part of the visitor experience.

For a public venue, that visibility adds another benefit. Visitors can see how food grows and discover that a productive garden doesn’t have to look like a traditional field.

81 Towers, Thousands of Growing Spaces

The convention center’s published project information describes a 2,000-square-foot growing area with:

81 vertical growing towers
44 planting spaces per tower
3,564 planting spaces in total

But the useful planning lesson goes beyond the tower count. The convention center describes planting in scheduled batches, allowing crops at different stages to grow at the same time and harvests to follow demand.

That’s how you work toward regular supplies for a kitchen: keep new plants coming through as mature crops are harvested. One enormous lettuce harvest followed by several empty weeks is much harder to put on a menu!

Planting capacity is a starting point for planning. Actual harvest quantities depend on crop choice, growing conditions, planting schedules and how much produce meets the kitchen’s requirements.

When Event Dining Became Community Support

The project also found a way to help beyond convention dining. In April 2020, Orange County reported that the convention center, Centerplate and Urban Smart Farms were donating fresh herbs and produce to local organizations during the COVID-19 disruption.

With event activity reduced, the growing team continued harvesting and redirected produce to people in the community.

It’s an example of why a farm’s harvest plan matters. Knowing who can use the produce—and having a way to get it to them—helps make the growing space useful even when circumstances change.

Read Orange County’s community donation story →

Could a Tower Farm Fit Your Venue?

The Orange County Convention Center shows how an indoor Tower Farm can connect food production with dining, visitor engagement and community support.

Your project might be a restaurant growing herbs near the kitchen, a hotel producing fresh greens, or an organization combining food production with hands-on learning. Start with your own goals, available space and the people who will use the harvest.

Talk to the kitchen or harvest recipients. Find out which crops and quantities would be useful.
Review the growing space. Consider lighting, water, power, access and the surrounding environment.
Plan the work. Assign responsibility for planting, daily care, harvesting and cleaning.
Build a realistic budget. Include the growing system, supporting equipment and ongoing operating costs.

Living Towers can help you work through the system options. Send us the dimensions of your space and we can help determine how many towers will fit. If you know your target quantity for a particular crop, we can help estimate the tower count needed. We can also explore a setup around your available budget.

Visit our Tower Farm Planning Guide for the steps, or explore our Tower Farm systems.

Ready to turn an idea into a growing project? Contact Living Towers and tell us what you have in mind. 🌱