The Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) Awards is a world-class competition showcasing award-winning floral, landscape and fantasy gardens created by local and international designers. Borneo Exotics is the world’s leading nursery for tropical pitcher plants and for the first time, they participated in this year’s SGF Awards.
Their work which was displayed on level 6 of the Suntec Convention Center was one that members from the Green Culture Singapore (GCS) discussion forum, especially those who are carnivorous plant enthusiasts, was looking forward to see. Many members wanted to know what new and rare species of tropical pitcher plants Borneo Exotics would be using for their garden design.
Named the “Season of Mist”, the work won a Silver Award under the Fantasy Garden category of the SGF Awards 2008. Diana Williams and Robert Cantley, founders of Borneo Exotics who are based in Sri Lanka, are already frequent participants at international flower shows even before they took part in the SGF Awards.
Diana and Rob are winners of the London Flower Show in 2004. They have also won a Silver Gilt at the 2005 Chelsea Flower Show and Gold Medals at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2006 and 2007. They are also winners the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Anthony Huxley Trophy for the best display of tender ornamental plants shown to the RHS in all the flower shows in the United Kingdom during 2006.
The Season of Mist is a rainforest fantasy garden that featured a dome-shaped enclosure, which housed some of the most rare and spectacular examples of tropical pitcher plants (Nepenthes) in cultivation. As written in the SGF official show programme booklet, the designers of this fantasy garden dedicated it to G. E. Rumphius (1627-1702) of Dutch descent who was the first to document in botanical terms this genus of carnivorous plants. At the age of 42, Rumphius lost his sense of sight and might have well dreamed of his days as a youth in Germany.
The garden aimed to illustrate the variation within this extraordinary genus of carnivorous plants, whilst depicting the life of Rumphius and the disastrous event surrounding the completion of his monumental life’s work, “Herbarium Amboinense”. The use of dramatic events emphasised Nepenthes as true wonders of evolution and the necessity for their conservation. All Nepenthes used in the exhibit have been artificially propagated by the designers themselves in their Sri Lankan nurseries.
I have been told that the dome structure was designed and constructed in Sri Lanka but it was dismantled again so that it could be transported to Singapore for the SGF. The structure was re-assembled upon its arrival at the Suntec Convention Center.
The dome is octagonal in shape and visitors to the SGF were treated to a “framed” picture of the beautiful gardenscape as they peered into each of the seven faces of this polygon. The one other facet of the octagon featured several foldable door with glass windows where one can look into to see a wax statue of Rumphius.
The interior of the dome is periodically shrouded in fine mist that conferred a magical and mysterious aura to the exhibit. It also help to increase the ambient air humidity for the plants, which can crash to a level that is too low for the comfort or even harmful to the plants that were planted in an air-conditioned indoor environment.
Diana used a variety of tropical plants to decorate the interior of the dome and naturally, being an exotic plant enthusiast, I began my hunt for uncommon plants used in the exhibit. One of my first finds were some small-growing sun pitcher plants (Heliamphora spp.) that were tucked at one dark corner. These temperate-growing carnivorous plants originate from the South American continent.
The other interesting find was a huge and handsome specimen of a dark red Nepenthes truncata. The gigantic pitchers found on the plant measured about 50 cm in length! As one can easily expect, the plant is extremely rare and there are only a few of such plants in the world.It was perhaps the most popular plant in the SGF! It attracted a lot of attention from the visitors to the SGF. Since people cannot bring the plant home, many visitors took pictures instead. I can still remember the uncountable number of camera lights that flashed before it.
Did anyone notice an overgrown Bucida tree that had broken through the roof of the dome? I believe some people might have missed this interesting addition to the exhibit as they have been mesmerised by the exotic array of plants that Borneo Exotics had brought for the SGF.
