While most of us associate the name AdventHealth with medical care, AdventHealth Celebration is proving the scope of care goes beyond medical services. In a marriage of agriculture and technology, the acute-care facility serving Walt Disney World and Greater Orlando has begun freight farming.
In the facility’s south parking lot near the Nicholson Center, the hospital administration has set up its 40-foot-by-8-foot Freight Farm. Freight Farms is a Boston-based agriculture technology company that manufactures and sells container farms — hydroponic farming systems assembled inside intermodal freight containers.
Chief Nursing Officer Patty Jo Toor and Christy Miller, director of the Wellness Center at AdventHealth Celebration, say the container farm has been a growing success. Toor, who’s worked at AdventHealth Celebration for 35 years, says she came up with the idea of putting a greenhouse on the hospital’s 48 acres about ten years ago.
“I felt like we had an opportunity to grow organic lettuce without any pesticides on it, which would help us to really move into an edible type of landscape,” says Toor, who adds that citrus trees and an herb garden already have been planted on the campus.
Read the article at www.centralfloridaagnews.com.