Bulduri Horticultural School is a professional vocational school with long lasting traditions belonging to the oldest gardening schools in Europe with a 110 year – old history. Since 1910 when the school was founded it has grown, transformed and developed.
Today school is an education centre with modern technologies and nice surroundings. Bulduri Horticultural school is unique vocational school in region as it has Plant biotechnology laboratories where students get hands on training and have opportunity to be involved both in research and day to day work. Laboratory has been involved during last two years in EIP-AGRI project “Development of biotechnological competences for production of high-value horticulture products”. During this project Bulduri Horticulture school has been working with calla lily micropropagation and virus detection in plantlets. Bulduri Horticulture school used to be locally famous for its calla lilies but unfortunately a virus was brought in with some lilies from abroad and local collection got infected. During this project we try to identify the viruses and eliminate them.
Bulduri Horticultural School has beautiful flowerbeds and dendrology park. During last two years’ main flowerbeds have gone under reconstruction and now have reborn in new beauty. In the new flowerbeds Bulduri Horticulture school has been developing unique project known as I-Garden. The aim of this project is to draw up and implement in practice a robotic, autonomous platform Latvian I-Garden that will ensure plant monitoring and tending function as well as automation and digitalization of the production process. At the moment a robot has been developed that is equipped with various cameras and can walk around the garden and scan the plants. Next step will be machine learning process to follow the plant growth and development, detect pests and illnesses gathering all the obtained information in the database.
Bulduri Horticultural School is very active to visit and learn from friend around the Europe. During last few month school participants have been involved in several Erasmus+ projects. In September Bulduri Horticultural school hosted Erasmus+ project “Bien-etre” activity “Indoor plants”. During this activity student from Bulduri Horticultural School together with students from Spain, France and Belgium made presentations about their national and traditional indoor plants, visited greenhouses, laboratory, botanical gardens in Salaspils and Riga. Together with Bulduri Horticultural School floristry teacher created indoor plant compositions.
At the end of October, a team from Bulduri Horticultural school during Erasmus+ activity “Local production and marketing” visited Belgium school IPEA La Reid. The aim of the activity was to introduce students with Liege region local production, meet cooperative owners that support local production by distributing their goods. Project participants had a chance to observe, discus and analyze how local production works in Belgium.
In November participants from Bulduri Horticultural School were involved in activity “Make Youth Work-Green” in Denmark Eco villages. During this activity participant got to know better BEN-Baltic Eco Village Network, visited two eco villages, got to know people from Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, Belorussia, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Finland, Sweden. During this project some drafts for future collaboration projects were started to strengthen connection between Bulduri Horticultural School and NGOS in Lithuania, Gotland and Germany.
We hope next year will bring us more students, projects and opportunities!
Article and photos: Ieva Vincovska!
