Syntropic Hydroponics™
From pod to ground — building long-term resilience. A decade-matured, biologically rich growing system from Three Treasures Living, Devon.
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THE ORIGIN STORY
After 40 years in horticulture, I've developed something I've never seen documented anywhere: a stable, decade-matured system that grows apricot trees, aloe, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, berries and grapes — over 100 species across multiple plant families — in the same recirculating reservoir.
Standard hydroponics is monoculture with little biology. What I've built — which I now call Syntropic Hydroponics — is polyculture with wide biology: the nutritional precision of hydroponics combined with the ecological richness of a living soil.
It runs on a deep flood-and-drain bed with inoculated biochar, mycorrhizal fungi, granite, clays and a rhythmic flood cycle that creates a stratified, living matrix. After a decade of maturation, the system regulates itself — plants find their own nutritional balance, and the biology becomes more capable, not less, with every passing year.
Not a substitute for traditional growing. A massive complement to it.
Why"SYNTROPIC"
Syntropy is the opposite of entropy — it describes how living systems build complexity, order and resilience over time, rather than breaking down.
A forest doesn't stay the same year after year. It accumulates: deeper root networks, richer soil biology, more diverse relationships between species. Syntropic agriculture works the same way — systems that improve rather than deplete, and become easier to manage as ecological relationships do more of the work.
Our hydroponic system follows the same principle. The biochar, clay and mineral substrate becomes more biologically alive every year. The range of plants it can support has grown over time — not because we redesigned it, but because the biology matured enough to support it.
Over 100 species One reservoir
Fruiting trees, succulents, salad crops, berries, vines, herbs and brassicas — all sharing the same nutrient solution, the same recirculating system, and the same biologically active growing medium.
Not everything thrives equally but the range of what does thrive, across such different plant families, remains the most striking result of ten years of development.
THE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE - How it works
The system is a deep flood-and-drain hydroponic bed — roughly 9–10 inches of biologically active substrate — flooded four times daily for 15 minutes and drained back to a central reservoir.
The substrate is built from inoculated biochar, micronised biochar, granite, clay pebbles and minerals, soluble mycorrhizal fungi, humic and fulvic acids, and potassium silicate. Together these create a living matrix that buffers nutrients, supports fungal networks, and stratifies biologically by depth.
The nutrient solution runs at a consistent CF and pH — but the substrate itself mediates what each plant actually receives, allowing very different species to thrive side by side.