Ortuino is an interactive and smart garden designed to encourage children to approach nature and permaculture values. The project is targeted to citizens whose available space is limited.

The kit has educational purposes and has been designed to symbolize the variety of a natural system. It's composed by:

- The packaging becomes the pot in which to grow. The related cover works as sun protection and greenhouse / seedbed. This has a hexagonal shape, like bees' cells and has an interlocking structure;

- Accessories for gardening (shovel, rake etc.) Including a seeds kit designed to give an example of the bioversity values: fruit, vegetables, spice, flower;

- The "heart" consists of electronic Arduino that through sensors detect soil moisture and sun exposure. The technology, unlike many systems that exploit the same principle, does not replace human intervention. Arduino, in fact, it does not use any automatic response that relates the values ​​in the optimum situation. A constant interaction is required; only after pressing a button, you get the necessary information (LED outputs) on how to intervene to take care of your garden. All this is to teach responsibility in respect of a life being and patience in respect of natural cycle that takes time;

- Access to a social digital platform with educational and entertaining content. Through this you can update the status of your vegetable garden, read data detected by the computer system and view all those who possess the same kit. The idea of ​​creating a community aims to bring together people who share a common interest, exchange experiences and good / bad practices, receive information on plants and planted (history, evolution seeds) and show the status of the other kits . The interaction between the kit and the computer is desirable to be mediated by the parent so that together they can share common and challenging experience;

Everything has been created using the technologies available in a FabLab (laser cut and 3d printing) during a training course sponsored by the City of Milan and aimed at people that currently does not study and does not work and whose background is characterized by completely different experiences , far from the reality of a maker space.