Gardening with Wilson

It was a hectic Saturday for me but one that was enjoyable and satisfying because I was able to share the things about gardening that I have learnt with the members of the public. I hope they will find the tips useful and inspire them to grow more plants.

My hectic Saturday schedule started in the afternoon at the Singapore Botanic Gardens with a gardening talk that was titled “Introduction to the Zingiberales order – Cultivation and Landscape Uses”. I am honoured to be able to give the first gardening talk for the public in a collaboration between Green Culture Singapore, Community in Bloom, HortPark and the National Library Board, at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. In the past years, our gardening talks were mostly given in the public and community libraries while some others were conducted at HortPark. 

The first thing that astonished me was the crowd that attended the talk at the Function Room. The room was totally filled and more chairs had to be carted in. Still, I noticed a couple of participants had to make do by sitting on the floor. I am surprised because I did not know there can be that many people who are interested to know more about the plants in the Zingiberales order which is made up of various ornamental, medicinal and edible plants that range from the bird of paradise, heliconia, various gingers and the rare and obscure Orchidantha.

I hope the audience who attended the talk will grow the rhizomes of the sand ginger, Kaempferia galanga, that were given to each of them. The sand ginger is a small plant that can be grown in a pot, both by apartment gardeners as well as those who have a garden in a landed property. It was a small gift that I hope will spark the public’s interest for gingers and other species belonging to the Zingiberales order.

The talk was indeed an ambitious one where I attempted to cover all eight families in the order. I really hope the pace was manageable for my audience and sincere apologies for the slight over-run because there was simply too much to cover. This first talk forms the first of the series of talks that will be conducted over the course of 2009. These later talks will cover some of the families separately in detail. 

After the talk at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, I rushed back to HortPark with the help of my good friend and colleague, Mr Ng Cheow Kheng, who offered me a fast ride on his car. The second thing which happened that astonished me was that some of my audience in the earlier session followed me to HortPark to take part in the guided tour of the Lifestyle Corner!

I would like to express my deep appreciation for the support and time that were given to me by my audience. From what I can remember, more than half of the group of about 10 persons that participated my guided tour were from the earlier crowd at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

Although I was all exhausted and my throat all parched from almost 3 hours of non-stop talking, I guess it was worth it, especially when I saw how the participants benefited from the sharing sessions that took place.