In an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while speeding farm-to-table delivery, Gallery by Chele recently launched its greenhouse from organic garden chef Chele Gonzalez, set up outdoors in the open air right outside his restaurant in the BGC high-rise building in the Philippines.

Spanish chef Chele says: "We want to challenge ourselves in order to be in unity with nature and respect the environment."

With the help of his team, including chef Carlos Villaflora and Borch Sanchez, Gonzalez installed vertical plant boxes and clay pots to organically grow about 40 species of herbs, vegetables, vines and small trees; there is even a wall covered with paco, an edible fern so popular in Filipino salads.

“I am very glad that there are many farmers here,” Chele says. “This year we have taken a big step towards the test kitchen. "We are starting to work with farmers on seasonality in the Philippines, we are identifying which ingredients are endemic, and we are creating a calendar documenting these endemic and seasonal ingredients."

These seasonal ingredients (some of which Chele calls “forgotten plants” because they grow like weeds and have been destroyed as such) include talin, a leafy vegetable that is the Filipino equivalent of spinach, and pansit-pansitan, a medicinal plant known for its analgesic and anti-arthritic properties.

Chele says they needed to travel to different parts of the Philippines to get the soil that was most compatible with their local plants, as well as add compost worms.

By planting its own greens and composting food waste from the kitchen, Gallery by Chele formed its own closed-loop supply chain and proved that it is not necessary to have a large piece of land to get your own urban farm.