The permaculture gardens of the Sumba Hospitality campus

Orin has been working on the gardens at the Sumba Hospitality Foundation as long as the IBUKU team were planning the beautiful buildings. They have really become something special.

The Sumba Hotel School is setting a new tone for development on an island that is rapidly becoming another tourism destination in Indonesia. Built entirely of bamboo, this school offers high quality hospitality training to underprivileged young men and women on the island. The campus is off the grid and powered by solar power. Water is recycled and reused to water the gardens. The landscape is designed following permaculture ethics and principles. It includes a extensive food forests, an annual market garden, rotating animal system,  a collection of edible street trees, medicinal plants, and other perennials used for food and animal fodder. Students learn not only how to work in hospitality industry,  but are also taught how to care for the land and how to grow food and raise animals sustainably. It is a beautiful illustration of how to help traditional peoples enter the modern world on two feet, while also honoring and understanding the importance of their traditions. Less than a year into its journey the campus is already eating home grown vegetables, harvesting moringa—a highly nutritions edible green—from its food forest,  as well as raising chickens and goats. A forgotten 5 hectare field of degraded land on a marginalized island in east Indonesia has been transformed into an iconic example of true philanthropy.

– Orin Hardy