Kate’s tour of Singapore started early at 10 am. With the kind help from Mr Ng Cheow Kheng, she went on a visit to Richard’s community garden at Ivory Heights in Jurong East. Richard’s garden is a prize-winning garden at the recent Community in Bloom Awards.
During our an hour long visit, it was obvious that Kate was impressed with the many artistic statutes created by Richard himself, the colourful landscape of plants and deep commitment that has been dedicated to maintain the garden. Richard introduced to Kate to his community garden and shared his gardening experience as well as the process that was undertaken to convert a previously barren and disused plot of land to its present grandeur. The both of them exchanged contacts and we also took a group picture to commemorate the visit.
We then proceeded to scenic Mount Faber for a hearty seafood lunch. During the journey to this popular tourist attraction, Cheow Kheng shared with Kate how he was involved in landscaping Mount Faber early during his career with then the Parks and Recreation Department, the predecessor of the National Parks Board (NParks).
After lunch we made our way back to the NParks Headquarters where we went on to explore the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Because Kate disclosed to me she was interested to see the vibrant colours of tropical plants, we brought her to take a look at the Ginger Garden where Lily and I shared with her some interesting facts about some of the ginger plants and members of the Zingiberales order that were in flower. Teresa, who was with us all the while, was admiring the exquisite beauty of the gingers while she was at the Ginger Garden. I noticed after this visit, Teresa is now hooked to a certain extent to these tropical plants too!
Kate and the rest of us later took a look at the Singapore Botanic Gardens’ Rain Forest Trail. The lushness of the tropical rain forest is something that is new to Kate from Adelaide, Australia. Although the entire tour of the rain forest trail was undertaken under the searing heat and unbearable humidity, I believe Kate had thoroughly enjoyed herself in the company of majestic towering trees that were all around her!
Due to time constraints, we were not able to completely explore the entire Singapore Botanic Gardens. After Cheow Kheng drove us back to Kate’s hotel at Little India, she presented Cheow Kheng with a beautiful thank you card that depicted a painting of the Sturt’s Desert Pea, an Australian native as well as a painted gum leaf. I would like to thank Cheow Kheng for spending the large part of the day where he introduced to Kate the Community in Bloom programme, arranged the community garden visit, shared the things that NParks are currently doing and for treating us to a fabulous lunch.
Kate’s last stop for the day was my community garden at Serangoon North. For the first time, she saw the plants and the garden with her own eyes. I took the opportunity to tell her about the concept of the garden as well as how it came about. She got to see the beautiful Musa ‘Morado’ banana tree which I had in my community garden that borne the red bananas that she bought for us to eat from the wet market.
Despite the hot and dry weather today, various Oriental leafy vegetables, namely, pak choi, Chinese spinach, water spinach and Chinese mustard were all looking really good as if they were all prepared to meet Kate. Most of the other plants in the community garden sulked after losing much moisture to the heat.
By the time we finished with the visit to my community garden, everyone was clearly tired. Kate gave me a goodbye hug before Teresa drove her back to the hotel. We promised to continue to keep in touch via regular updates of our blogs and email correspondence. The duration of just one day to tour the Garden City of Singapore was clearly insufficient. I do hope Kate can come visit Singapore again in the near future. I hope that Lily and Teresa had enjoyed the time with Kate too.
