Easter Gardening Talk @ HortPark

Yesterday, my colleague, Jin Hong and I, collaborated to give a talk that tied in with the Easter theme at HortPark’s Leaf Room. The talk was part of the “Easter Eggstravaganza” event that was organised by HortPark. Despite the small turnout, participants who attended the session found the ideas that we shared with them on how to use eggs in gardening useful and interesting.

The “Easter Eggstravaganza”  banner outside HortPark.

Jin Hong shared with our audience on how one play a part to save the environment by using eggshells as containers that can be used to raise seedlings instead of using peat pellets and pots which derive their raw material from peat bog habitats. Eggshells can also be decorated like Easter eggs and used as a novel container for growing small plants. Containing mostly calcium, eggshells are a rich source of calcium that can be added to the compost heap and soil in the garden and potting mix for plants.

Jin Hong giving the talk on how to turn eggshells into decorated containers.

For my part in the talk, I shared with our audience that they can actually use bird’s nest ferns as ‘living’ containers for celebrating Easter in the tropics. Most of us use rattan or bamboo baskets to put our decorated Easter eggs. While researching on the topic. I realised that there are similar-looking but different species of bird’s nest ferns. Before the talk, I went around the nurseries to take a closer look at the different bird’s nest ferns on sale so as to be able to share my findings with the participants.

Jin Hong giving a guided tour of the Lifestyle Corner at HortPark.

After the talk, my colleague, Jin Hong, took over to bring the participants of the talk on a guided tour of the Lifestyle Corner. The time was made fruitful then because the skies outside poured heavily. Our audience also got to see the new feature at the Learning Corner, which now has a display of an array of decorated eggs as planting containers, as well as, various different uses for eggshells that we can think of, in the garden.

The Lifestyle Corner showcase featuring different uses for eggshells in the garden as well as the various species of bird’s nest ferns we can find on sale in local nurseries.

Besides just the uses of eggshells, visitors to the Lifestyle Corner in HortPark this month, will get to examine the various types of bird’s nest ferns that can be purchased from nurseries locally. Although they are all called “bird’s nest ferns”, these plants can be divided into cultivars coming from three main species, namely, Asplenium australascium, A. antiquum and A. nidus. The most common species we see perching on trees is in fact, A. australasicum, based on the appearance of the cross-section of its midrib.

Many thanks to Richmond Tan, one of my Green Culture Singapore forum moderators, who came to support the talk as well as to take the photographs shown on this blog post.