‘Moderator in nature’: Edible Garden City’s Bjorn Low wants to sow green ideas that will outlast him
A plan to lead ‘a simple life’ has sprouted into a 41-strong social enterprise building edible gardens across Singapore
[SINGAPORE] When Bjorn Low returned to Singapore from London 13 years ago, he was inspired by the English city’s emerging “farm-to-table” scene to start a farming venture that he believed would last just three years.
“I thought I would just have fun, grow some vegetables, lead a simple life,” Low, co-founder and chief urban farmer of social enterprise Edible Garden City (EGC), quipped in an interview with The Business Times.
That simple plan blossomed into a journey that continues more than a decade on. Today, EGC is a 41-person operation responsible for building over 280 edible gardens and urban farms across Singapore. Low has also been recognised in the 2025 Sustainability Impact Awards, jointly presented by BT and UOB, as the recipient of one of two Leader of the Year titles.
The turn of events was a “blessing”, he said. “I never thought it would (become) this way.”
As one of the first urban farming ventures in Singapore, EGC pioneered a sector that now includes community players such as City Sprouts and high-tech farms like Sustenir Agriculture.
Low’s early work helped legitimise urban agriculture, with boutique restaurants and hotels first adopting the concept before developers and government agencies followed suit.
A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU
Friday, 12.30 pm
ESG Insights
An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues.
But the industry is not without challenges. Recent high-profile closures in Singapore’s high-tech farming sector, such as the collapse of Temasek-backed vertical fish farm Apollo Aquaculture, have highlighted the vulnerabilities of capital-intensive, automation-heavy models.
These setbacks have also cast doubt on the feasibility of the government’s ambitious “30 by 30” food security goal, with the latest figures suggesting it is off track.
Yet, where others see setbacks, Low finds strategic openings for alternative, more resilient models. He is already developing new ideas to help advance Singapore’s food security objectives.
SEE ALSO
There is satisfaction in “being able to be that moderator in nature, to help things go along”, he said. “Having a lot of failures in the gardens or plants is quite therapeutic. It teaches you about death and life and regeneration and all of that.”
An urban harvest
One innovative concept is replacing decorative urban greenery with food-producing crops that store carbohydrates. This would mean swopping ornamental flowers and shrubs for crops such as cassava, sweet potato and air potato – the last being a vine.
This idea is guided by Low’s “Landscape Nutrition Index”, a framework he developed for turning ornamental city landscapes into climate-friendly edible gardens. The goal is to find out if urban landscapes can serve as food reserves while maintaining their aesthetic appeal.
“Can that landscape be more purposeful? Can it perhaps be for storage and nutrition, rather than just an ornamental landscape?”
He is running a pilot of this project at Parkroyal Collection Pickering, a hotel on Upper Pickering Street. The plan is to integrate the edible plants into the property’s existing landscaping without dramatically changing its appearance.
“If we are able to convert one plot, then we can progressively convert more plots,” he said. If the pilot bears fruit, the site could showcase the concept to urban planners, landscapers and architects.
The project is now in the plant selection phase, where the team chooses the crops that will best suit the landscape without requiring major changes.
A social impact
Beyond commercial work, EGC aims to run programmes with social impact.
“During that peak… of urban farming, there (was) always a very siloed focus on productivity, like how much the farm can produce,” said Low. “But I think… the opportunity is missed if we don’t create social value and community impact, as well.”
EGC’s therapeutic horticulture programme is one project that serves this social mission. It was inspired by a partnership with the National Parks Board and National University of Singapore that explored the non-food benefits of gardening.
The collaboration found that gardening activities led to measurable reductions in participants’ stress markers.
EGC then expanded the project to serve foreign domestic workers, migrant workers and at-risk seniors, running programmes in neighbourhoods with large elderly populations, such as Toa Payoh and Marine Parade.
This was among low-income rental flats, where social isolation is a big problem, said Low. The urban farming activities helped bring the residents into a community setting.
The primary challenge, however, is encouraging socially isolated seniors to leave their homes. To overcome this, EGC’s next step is to frame urban farming as a medical therapy that doctors can prescribe.
The social enterprise’s partnership with the Health District @ Queenstown initiative and the Ministry of National Development is based on that principle, said Low.
However, a major hurdle looms: EGC will not call Queenstown home for much longer, as its land lease expires at the end of 2025. It is seeking a half-year extension to manage the transition.
“Of course, we always knew that we had nine years (there), and it was an experiment to look at transitionary state land like this,” said Low. “We’d like to stay longer because you build a connection with space overnight… But I think we have come to terms with that, and I think it’s again time for us to get out of our comfort zone.”
The next harvest
Low views the impending move as another chance to innovate, with EGC’s uncompleted project at Funan mall a key avenue he wants to explore.
The idea, he explained, is to see if urban agriculture can activate a retail space, using it to create a community “third space”, and to explore the social dynamics that emerge when agriculture is embedded in a commercial environment.
Securing the half-year lease extension would give his team the runway to find the right space and plan the next move.
This challenge comes as the urban farming landscape grows more competitive. Low said that in 2025, EGC’s produce sales fell 20 per cent due to a softer market, restaurant closures and more industry competition.
He explained that many products the enterprise has grown over the last decade, such as edible flowers, now face numerous competitors who can replicate a proven formula for market success.
“We shouldn’t regress, so we are constantly innovating on the things that we can grow – how we can excite the local food scene.”
He wants to shift the conversation from food security, which focuses heavily on output, to the idea of “food sovereignty”, which also examines community dynamics and citizen ownership of food production.
His ultimate goal is for EGC’s community-centred approach to be adopted at scale, making both the enterprise and his personal involvement obsolete.
“There’s always a hope that it won’t need to be me anymore, or it won’t need to be EGC anymore,” he said.
“I hope one day… the models that we have tried and tested can be adopted by the state, so (they) can be more efficiently pushed through with more resources, and we can just step back.”
For Low, this would be the ultimate measure of success: knowing that his urban farming ideas have made an impact that will outlast him.
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.
