The results of the Community in Bloom Awards for 2008 have finally been announced. A couple of winners who are new faces in this year’s Awards have been highlighted in an interview that was published on Straits Times Life! last Saturday.
Mr Lim Wai Lone whose maisonette balcony garden was featured in the report is one of my members from the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum. Although, it was not stated in the report, quite a handful of the award winners in this year’s Community in Bloom Awards are members from the forum.
Mr Lim and his garden was featured on the cover page of Straits Times Life!.
As a gardener in Singapore, I feel happy that there is this regular nationwide gardening competition that “inculcates a greater passion for gardening and bonding in the community, as well as, to recognise their gardening efforts”. These are the aims of the Awards as mentioned in the Community in Bloom’s webpage. Individual home gardeners who live in a highrise apartment or a landed home are not forgotten although the Awards’ name may make one think that it caters only to community gardeners.
Two photos on the first page of the report showed how Wai Lone’s winning highrise garden look like.
Besides targetting at gardeners who do their planting in community and private gardens, the Awards is also open to groups from schools of all levels and organisations. For the former group, I think the Awards is especially important. Gardening is one activity that brings Mother Nature closer to the hearts and eyes of our younger generation. Many young ones these days are either too bogged down by their hectic schoolwork or are more attracted towards modern entertainment gadgets that they no longer take notice of the flora and fauna around us. Many Singaporeans these days may also find it difficult to see how food is produced in our highly urbanised environment. Gardening is a way that one can try his hands to grow their own edible plants.
The newspaper report also introduced to readers the winners from schools, public and private housing estates.
The Community in Bloom has crafted activities compiled in a resource called “Community In Bloom Schools” for students to engage them in gardening. Below is some information that is provided on Community in Bloom’s website:
The “Community In Bloom Schools” resources are especially designed to turn gardening activities and nature appreciation into mini projects and school gardens into outdoor classrooms. This is to develop science process skills, project management skills, teamwork and entrepreneurial skills for the students. Through these engaging gardening activities, students will grow a love for gardening and be more involved in the school garden.
Resource materials for both Primary and Secondary levels have been created, and contain a series of activities students can do to add value to their curricula. Teachers will also find them useful in encouraging self-directed learning among students.
The Community In Bloom Schools resources are available from the two service providers:
For more information on the Community in Bloom programme, click on this link for more information.
Teachers, do check out the CIB Schools materials. There’s much fun in learning using gardening as a platform. Your feedback would be appreciated. Thanks
With so much effort in community in Bloom by NParks, the town council have just imformed us removal of plants we have beautifully planted outside our ground floor flat then contradicts and contravenes the spirit of community in bloom. It is really a strange government.