Indoor Hydroponic Garden Systems Are Growing Food and Connection Across Manitoba

For years, Kerry Green watched fresh food travel thousands of kilometres before landing on Manitobans’ plates — often wilted, expensive, or already nearing its expiry date.

So instead of asking how to grow more food in one place, the Winnipeg-based entrepreneur began asking a different question: what if food was grown right where it’s needed?

That question became the foundation of Les Verts Living, a Manitoba-made indoor hydroponic garden system now being used in homes, schools, senior centres, and rural communities across Canada.

“We looked at how fragile plants are, how much transportation is involved, and how unreliable supply chains can be,” Green said. “It made more sense to allow production as close to where the food was required as we could.”

Green didn’t come to the idea as a hobbyist. His background — and that of his team — is rooted in agronomy and plant science.

“We had been doing lots of scientific trials, research trials, collecting data — all those sorts of things — in a growth chamber,” he said. “So we had experience running growth chambers, not for food production, but to look at very early stages of crops.”

That experience initially led them to explore building a large-scale leafy greens facility in Winnipeg. After visiting everything from massive indoor farms to shipping-container models, the group walked away.

“It was very expensive to start up, and there was really no way to start small,” Green said. “The table stakes were well over a million dollars.”

Geography also played a role.

“If we did something in Winnipeg, it still meant a lot of transportation costs,” he said. “How do we get leafy greens to Churchill without putting them on a plane?”

Instead, the team pivoted. In 2019, they began developing compact, modular indoor hydroponic systems that could be placed almost anywhere — from living rooms and basements to schools, senior centres, and community spaces — without major renovations or industrial infrastructure.

“You could buy one or two, try them out,” Green said. “If you wanted to grow more, you could add to them seamlessly.”

Learning, wellbeing, and food security through an indoor hydroponic garden system

Some of the strongest early uptake has come from the education system.

“In schools, the kids are touching, seeing, feeling how plants grow,” Green said. “It’s easy to use for students and teachers.”

In many communities, that learning extends beyond the classroom.

“In a lot of the senior homes, they’re involving schools to work with the seniors, to plant together,” he said. “There’s intergenerational contact and activities that come from it.”

In Roblin, Manitoba, one senior centre has built an entire community loop around the system.

“The primary students come in, the seniors plant together,” Green said. “They grow it out, and they have a small restaurant that buys some produce from them, and then they use that funding to buy more supplies.”

For many seniors, the systems also restore something deeply personal.

“A lot of people have lost that experience when they moved from their house,” Green said. “People cluster around them, watching flowers bloom or tomatoes ripen.”

Green often describes Les Verts Living through four key lenses: food security, sustainability, safety, and stability.

During the pandemic, those ideas became urgent.

“We saw that the traditional supply chains were not necessarily that reliable,” he said. “The closer the customers were to home, the more important it was to them.”

Growing food indoors also allows for variety rarely seen in grocery stores.

“There’s hundreds of varieties of lettuce,” Green said. “We can select them based on taste, nutritional value, or appearance — not how far they’ll travel.”

Because the environment is controlled, growers aren’t at the mercy of Manitoba’s increasingly unpredictable climate.

“It’s sort of like perpetual spring,” Green said. “You know the plants are going to perform.”

Built by growers — and protected by IP

Unlike many indoor farming startups, Les Verts Living wasn’t born out of Silicon Valley.

“We approached it from a grower perspective — an agronomic perspective,” Green said. “Tested varieties, tested regimes… how much light, what types of nutrition, how often to water.”

That mindset also shaped how the company approached intellectual property — an area Green knows can make or break a business.

“When we sold our previous company, it was the IP that added a whole bunch of value,” he said. “It exponentially added to it.”

Through ElevateIP, a national intellectual property program delivered locally by North Forge — Manitoba’s startup incubator supporting founders from ideation to investment readiness — Les Verts Living was able to protect its innovations earlier and more strategically.

“It’s expensive to do,” Green said. “Patents, maintenance fees…  they run into large amounts of money.”

For many startups, he said, IP protection feels like a luxury.

“It’s seldom something you view as a necessity at that stage,” he said. “But in reality, it needs to be a priority, because so many of those things you can’t go backwards on.”

Beyond funding, Green credits the program with providing clarity and confidence.

“The knowledge and assistance — a second set of eyes — has been really beneficial,” he said. “Combined with the financial aspect, it has put us much further ahead on this project.”

Growing at home, too

While schools and senior centres have embraced the systems, Les Verts Living is also designed for everyday households.

“You can grow virtually any kind of leafy green, small tomatoes, small peppers,” Green said. “If you follow the instructions, you can grow.”

More information is available at lesverts.com, with showrooms located in both Winnipeg and Vancouver.