Aljunied Town Council, together with National Parks Board (NParks), Green Culture Singapore (GCS) and Hwi Yoh Court Resident’s Committee (RC), organized a workshop to promote open-concept community gardening last Saturday.
The workshop started with an opening address by Mdm Cynthia Phua, who is Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC & Chairperson of Aljunied Town Council was the guest-of-honour for the event. She herself is a keen gardener who encouraged residents to start new gardens and announced that RCs groups in her constituency will each receive a composting kit to help in their gardening.
Mdm Claire Ng, my Chairperson from my RC also gave an opening speech which also introduced my community garden and shared briefly our experience.
Mdm Claire Ng, (Hwi Yoh Court RC Chairman, first from left) and Mdm Cynthia Phua (sixth from left) posing for a picture with NParks and Aljunied Town Council staff and Mr David Murphy from GreenBack.
Two community gardeners, myself who is founder of award-winning open-concept Pride-in-Bloom community garden at Serangoon North and Ms Anne Koh, Chairman of Marine Crescent RC shared our positive yet realistic ‘fenceless’ gardening experience during the workshop.
Fenceless gardens are never easy. Like what I shared during my talk, I told the audience that my fellow community gardeners are usually more than happy to share our harvest or allow a fellow resident take some of our plants. But what we hope residents or visitors would do is to come at the time when we are around so as to ask for permission and also provide help to harvest or dig out a plant. What we have experienced so far was inconsiderate harvesting of plants which resulted in plants that were injured or destroyed. My fellow gardeners get very disheartened as a result.
The workshop in progress.
Beside sharing our fenceless community garden experiences, Ms Lily Chen from the Community in Bloom (CIB) who is also a moderator from the GCS discussion forum then talked about the support that NParks can give to community gardeners and new start-ups. We also had Mr David Murphy from GreenBack who spoke about the benefits of vermi-composting. We generate a lot of waste in the garden and kitchen and these can actually be recycled by worms and beneficial bacteria to give nutrients which can be fed to plants to help with their growth.
Mdm Cynthia Phua harvested a winter melon with Wilson’s help from his kitchen garden at Serangoon North.
After the workshop, an enriching tour around my open concept ginger and kitchen gardens soon followed. Alot of participants were quite interested to see a favourite spiral ginger, Costus woodsonii, which I grew around the Yellow Bells tree (Tecoma stans) planted by Mrs Lim Hwee Hua. As a result of that, I cut quite a large number of stems that were given out to everyone to start a new plant. During the tour, Mdm Cynthia Phua also helped to harvest a winter melon from a vine growing in the community garden.
The air plant growing demonstration conducted with the help from Green Culture Singapore members.
Participants of the workshop also get to enjoy a demonstration on how to grow air plants by my colleague, Jin Hong, from the newly formed Hort Excellence division and my forum members from the GCS forum. Everyone had fun trying to make their own airplant holder using a metal steamboat ladle, which was an innovative idea to most.
My sincere thanks go to Richard, Yong Kuan, Teresa and Karen who came all the way to Serangoon North to lend their hand to ensure the demonstration and guided tour went on smoothly. I also want to thank my community gardeners, Mr and Mrs Seng as well as Mrs Yap who came to listen to the talks given during the workshop.
Mdm Cynthia Phua and Azmi from CIB looking at gardening resource materials and brochures available at the CIB exhibition booth.
Exhibition booths were also set up by the CIB and GreenBack Pte Ltd showcase that they do. CIB put forth a new set of brochures on community gardening as well as a list of new gardening books which plant enthusiasts can borrow from the community and public libraries to read. GreenBack Pte Ltd also brought along packets of compost and their vermi-composting kit which gardeners can buy.
