I had been busy with the preparations for GardenTech 2007 which explains the lack of posts through the entire of this week. GardenTech 2007 is an exhibition that gathers commercial companies, societies and instituitons that have products or services that cater to the needs of horticulture and gardening.
This year, this exhibition was held at HortPark, a new park slated to be a gardening hub for Singapore. The location is so new that many cab-drivers are not aware of its exact location!!! The pronounciation for the name “HortPark” can be quite tricky on the tongue. Many cab-drivers wondered where is “HOT Park” when the name is not properly pronounced.
The location of HortPark is quite “ulu” or “god foresaken” to many people. Many of my GCS members have lamented the problem of accessibility and questioned about its future. Singapore’s quite small so accessibility should not be a problem and there is talk that there will be shuttle bus services in the near future. What matters are the activities that will take place next time. They must be able to draw people from all over Singapore to come.
Earlier this week, a couple of GCS members and I were involved in setting up the GCS booth. We moved in on Thursday, just one day before the show opened actually. This time, we got a new team member, Phillipe, who is our creative director.
We took a daring approach and our booth this time around wasn’t the typical “plants only” type of booth expected of a gardening group/society.
Phillipe used shadows of humans to depict the three actions necessary to be part of the GCS discussion forum – Join, Interact and Discover. The “join” word is self-explanatory – you need to register to join in the discussion. “Interact” refers to the mingling between members via the active discussion of gardening related topics. “Discover’ points to the new ways of doing things coming from the inputs contributed by fellow members.
He also mounted various bromeliads on driftwood logs to add colour to our booth. We also wanted to showcase bromeliads as easy to maintain houseplants that anyone can grow.
The use of a black table cloth really makes our booth stand out amongst the others for other gardening societies and institutions. I must say everything was tastefully done.
Kudos to Phillipe! Your contribution really made a difference to Green Culture Singapore!
The crowd around our booth on Sunday, which was the third day of the GardenTech. The heavy downpour did not deter people from coming though.
