Category Archives: Gardening People in Singapore

Visits or Media Reports on the Gardening People in Singapore.

My First Gardening Talk at the Singapore Gardening Society

Posted on April 22, 2009 | Leave a comment

Last Saturday marked a significant milestone in my gardening hobby and carrer. This was the first time that I gave a talk to the members of the Singapore Gardening Society and I must thank Mr Victor Lee who gave me this opportunity to do so. Mr Lee is the current Vice-President and Editor of the society.

My talk  entitled ‘Let’s grow culinary herbs and spices’ was delivered at Cluny Room in the RELC International Hotel. About thirty society members turned up and I was honoured by the presence of Lady Yuen-Peng McNeice who came all the way to the hotel to listen to my talk. Mr John Tan, President of the Singapore Gardening Society, gave an introduction about me before the session was started.

I elaborated on how one can be successful in growing Mediterranean herbs in Singapore’s hot, wet and humid tropical climate by using the right type of soil mix. I also took the opportunity to clarify the confusion that most Singaporeans have about the Indian Borage (Plectranthus amboinicus) and the true mint (Mentha spp.); wormwood (Artemisia scoparia/capillaris) and the true dill (Anethum graveolens). I also offered substitutes to difficult to grow culinary herbs like the coriander and tarragon. Sources where one can buy culinary herbs to grow in the garden were also shared with everyone.

At the end of the talk, a ziplock bag containing a packet of culinary herb seeds and two ginger rhizomes of the sand ginger (Kaempferia galanga) and Chinese keys (Boesenbergia rotunda), which were sponsored by me, were given to members so that they can get started with culinary herb growing once they get home.

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D.I.Y Vertical Wall Gardening – Talk, Guided Tour & Showcase of Vertical Wall @ HortPark

Posted on April 20, 2009 | 4 Comments

HortPark’s Fruit Room was filled to its brim last Saturday! More than 100 gardening enthusiasts attended the talk on ‘D.I.Y Vertical Wall’ by Mr Albert Quek. The talk was jointly organized by the division which I belong to, Hort Excellence, as well as, Community in Bloom, HortPark and my gardening website, Green Culture Singapore.

Mr. Albert Quek sharing his experience on D.I.Y vertical gardening to the audience. 

In conjunction with the talk, a showcase of four different types and systems of vertical gardens was specially put up at the Lifestyle Corner. Participants of the talk were invited to a guided tour of the Lifestyle Corner with a special briefing on the vertical gardens on display. Due to the overwhelming response, my colleague, Jin Hong, had to divide the crowd into two groups and as a result, the guided tour of the Lifestyle Corner had to be done twice!

 Guided tour of the indoor vertical wall showcase outside the Lifestyle Corner.

The four different types of vertical gardens showcased in HortPark’s Lifestyle Corner shown below are the D.I.Y. green wall by Albert Quek (top left), the MiniGarden available from Far East Flora (top right), a living portrait sponsored by Consis Engineering Pte. Ltd. (bottom left) and a replica of my own vertical garden that has been featured on the Straits Times Life! section some weeks back (bottom right). 

The different types of vertical garden that can be set up at home.

A vertical garden is a solution for a plant-lover with limited growing space at home. Plants grown up on a wall will help to decorate a boring plain wall. Vertical gardens can also be set up outdoors where they will both decorate the exterior facade, as well as, help to cool buildings down via a similar way to what green roofs do.

D.I.Y vertical wall created by Mr. Albert Quek.

The speaker, Mr Albert Quek, is the first runner-up of the balcony gardens category in the recent Community in Bloom Awards competition. His innovation has been highlighted several times in Straits Times Life! Many thanks to Community in Bloom for helping to connect us up so that Albert’s innovative creation can be showcased to the visitors of HortPark.

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Success Story of Community Gardening in a Private Company

Posted on April 14, 2009 | 1 Comment

It is heartening to see a different feature written on community gardening that was published in Straits Times Life! section on 29 Mar 2009. Most of us are well aware that community gardening is an activity that is prevalent in schools and both private and public residential estates.

What was different this time was that article written by Andrew Tan reported an example of a company that has a successful and thriving gardening club. Yokogawa Singapore was the company that was highlighted. It is quite surprising to know that employees of Yokogawa Singapore can actually commit themselves to garden as a group at their workplace. 

This is highly admirable because it is difficult to imagine how a gardening club in a company can actually take off because everyone would be too tired after a long day’s worth of work to find time to do community gardening. Whatever time that is left after office hours and in the weekends are precious to most people as they would want use that time to rest, recharge or be with friends and family members. After work hours and weekends are indeed important to some people who just cannot wait to get out of the office to avoid facing their colleagues and bosses!

Set up two years ago, the efforts put in by Yokogawa Singapore paid off when they won a gold award in last year’s Community in Bloom award. In their factory premises in Bedok South, staff that form the gardening club collective help to tend to the large number of plants that are grown in a xeric garden, two different Japanese themed roof-top gardens and a vegetable and herb garden.

For a community garden at a workplace to work, it is important that the management sees the value of allowing such an activity to take place in its premises. Besides financial support that needs to be given for start-up, the company may also consider granting a short span of a few hours during a week during office hours so that employees can go to work in the garden.

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Eng Ong’s first Mandarin Gardening Talk

Posted on April 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

A moderator on the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum, Mr Tan Eng Ong, is well known among members as our African violet growing expert. Last Saturday afternoon, he delivered his first Mandarin gardening talk that was entitled  “Introduction to the Cultivation of African Violets” at Jurong West Public Library, as part of a series under the ‘Community in Bloom’ (CIB) Programme, in collaboration with Green Culture Singapore (GCS) and the National Library Board (NLB).

Eng Ong shared his experience on growing these colourful flowering plants and their growing requirements such as temperature regulation, lighting, soil-mix, fertilizing, watering, propagation techniques and pest control in our local climate. The audience was also treated to numerous pictures of beautiful plants grown by him in their glorious blooms of different shades of blues, whites, pinks and reds, which explains why African violets are popular houseplants worldwide and appeal to many avid gardeners. Before the session ended, Eng Ong shared with the audience on basic techniques involved in the vegetative propagation of these plants for exchange with fellow enthusiasts and friends.

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Community in Bloom & Hort Excellence work in synergy to promote open-concept community gardening @ Aljunied GRC!

Posted on April 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

 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.

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Vertical Gardening Feature in Straits Times Life!

Posted on March 29, 2009 | 1 Comment

There was an extensive feature on vertical gardening in Singapore in the Straits Times Life! section yesterday. Vertical gardening is something that most Singaporeans can easily perceive since decades ago, our dwellings have gone skywards to make the best use of limited land in our island state.

Vertical gardening is the growing of plants on the vertical surfaces, be it on the wall of a home or something that is larger like the facade of a building. It is more than just aesthetics. Vertical greenery can help to cool buildings, thereby the reducing the need and cost of expensive air-conditioning. Plants also help to soften the hard and cold look of concrete that is used to construct our ‘concrete jungle’ in highly urbanised Singapore.

On the leftmost corner of the Straits Times main section, one of my vertical gardens with airplants on it was featured.

 The coverage on vertical gardening featured both hobbyist and commercial set-ups. For those of us who have followed the Community in Bloom Awards last year, we would have guessed that Mr Albert Quek’s set-up is one that would naturally appear in the feature story in the hobbyist vertical gardens portion. Indeed, Albert’s vertical garden was featured, together with two smaller photographs that showed how one can do something similar using bamboo sticks.

The cover page of Straits Times Life! section showing the feature story of the day.

I am honoured to be the next hobbyist who was featured in the story. My vertical gardens were inspired by Andrew Tan’s set-up which I first got to see it last December when I had the privilege of an invitation to visit his home. Andrew used an aluminium window grille in this vertical garden. For me, I recruited my Dad to help me in the construction of my vertical garden where he used laundry bamboo poles to make a grid that served the same purpose as the metal one used by Andrew.

I am honoured to have my two vertical gardens featured in the story. The larger vertical garden which had many airplants (Tillandsia spp.) perched on pieces of driftwood secured to the bamboo frame was shown on the first page of the main section of the Straits Times! I have noticed quite a lot of vertical gardens are rather ‘flat’ in their design and I thought I should just secure pieces of contorted driftwood onto the rather flat bamboo frame so as to achieve a naturalistic look where the branches can ‘grow outwards’ from the wall. I would then perch airplants on some of these branches.

The first page of the story and the vertical garden that was featured was mine which is a very simple set-up that can be done by securing decorative containers into a bamboo frame.

I also did a smaller version using the same framework but I secured small decorative containers onto the frame. The containers are very cheap and are bonded to the framework using cable ties. I would then slot in various plants grown in pots into these containers. Whenever the plants decline, I can easily take them out and swop with new ones. In my current set-up, I used peperomias which is a group of plants that I like every much due to their differing leaf shapes, texture and colour as well as various varying growth habits. 

The second page of the story that showed Veera’s set-up as well as the modular system that is available for purchase from Far East Flora. The vertical garden at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3 was also featured.

For those of us who do not want to spend too much time making his/her own vertical garden, one can go buy a modular system called ‘Minigarden’ that is available from Far East Flora. Each module has three pockets and one can easily slot in a plant into each pocket. Each module can then be stacked up to a desired height.

For larger set-ups, it is best to consult a commercial company to help with the design and implementation. For this, Greenology’s wholly recycable ‘Green Envelope System’ was featured. It was designed by Veera, the boss of the company and comes with an irrigation system which is essential to provide water for a large set-up.

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Posted in Gardening People in Singapore, High-rise Gardening, Houseplants, Media Appearances, Newspaper features

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Andrew’s Article on the Variegated Costus

Posted on February 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

A gardening-related article that was written by Andrew Tan appeared alongside the Root Awakening column yesterday. This time, Andrew touched on a favourite plant group of mine – Costus – or more commonly referred to as the ‘spiral gingers’. 

Spiral gingers are classified in a family of their own, Costaceae. They are related to the true gingers that belong to the Zingiberaceae family, where several of its members are what we are familiar with, one of which, is the cooking ginger. Spiral gingers differ from the true gingers via their lack of aromatic oils in their sap and adopt a strange but attractive spiralling growth habit.

Spiral gingers are perhaps the most adaptable to high-rise apartment growing conditions. Many other gingers are particular with the windy and dry air conditions encountered in the high-rise indoor environment. Spiral gingers with their either waxy or hairy thick leaves seem to be able to grow well.

Many of these spiral gingers can flower when grown in the ground, but I have yet to see them bloom profusely and regularly when grown inside pots in the high-rise environment. To date, I have only one reliable flowering costus that I would like recommend to the high-rise gardener – Costus woodsonii. It is one not very fussy flowering costus that produces dark red flowering cones on a regular basis that look like fat lip sticks.

There are also spiral gingers that are admired for their foliage, such as the one featured by Andrew, Costus arabicus variegata. It is sometimes called C. amazonicus and is not commonly found locally and so far, I saw some on sale in Ang Mo Kio Floral and Landscape, a nursery that is located just next to the Ang Mo Kio Community Library. Another variegated costus relative, Cheilocostus speciosus, also has a variegated version that is very attractive but taller growing. Below is a link to the post I wrote about the latter on this blog:

http://gardeningwithwilson.com/2008/08/11/variegated-cheilocostus-speciosus-in-bloom/

I noticed also that spiral gingers tend to be attacked by mealy bugs, thrips and aphids when they are grown in the high-rise apartment. They are most effectively eradicated using the insecticide called Confidor which is one that is systemic.

Spiral gingers are best grown in a location where they can receive filtered to direct sunshine for at least 4 to 6 hours daily in the high-rise apartment.  Hence if you have a sunny East- or West-facing balcony, the spiral ginger is for you. Outdoors, spiral gingers prefer to be grown in a location that is sheltered from winds where they can also receive filtered sunshine for most of the day. They must be well-watered and prefer to be grown inside a medium that is moisture-retaining, free-draining and rich in organic matter.

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Madame Butterfly on TV!

Posted on December 31, 2008 | Leave a comment

 Thanks to Richmond, my fellow moderator from the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum, for reminding me to turn on and watch what was on the television last night. At 11.30 pm, the Mandarin info-educational series entitled “City Footprints” or “城市.生命线” was being aired every Tuesday night. Each episode features a story of an individual or community in our city that mirrors and reflects how each responds and reacts to the paradigm shifts that occur as a result of rapid social urbanisation.

 A segment showing Rosalind working in the garden.

The episode that was aired on 29 Dec 08 focussed its attention on Mrs Rosalind Tan, who is now famously known as “Madame Butterfly” of Alexandra Hospital. She is the person behind the great healing gardens of the hospital which earned it a title called “a hospital in a garden.” As her title suggests, she is best known for her work on setting up the first butterfly garden in a hospital in Singapore with the help from local nature groups. The butterfly garden in Alexandra Hospital is now home to more than a hundred species of butterflies.

She runs a butterfly nursery at home. Rosalind collects the caterpillars she saw at the hospital grounds and brings them home where she rears them until they attain maturity. She then brings the butterflies back to the hospital’s gardens to be released. By doing this, she is able to control the feeding patterns of her caterpillars. If left unchecked in the hospital gardens, caterpillars can defoliate entire populations of plants! Hence it is a daunting task as Rosalind has to painstakingly grow certain butterfly food plants and to ensure there is sufficient supply at all times for her caterpillars.

Rosalind at a gathering of the Singapore Gardening Society. 

An avid gardener she is, Rosalind is an active member of the Singapore Gardening Society and in one particular segment of the show featured her with senior members of the society at a gathering held at the hospital. Rosalind explained the ability of the gardening hobby being able to attract people from all walks of life to come together to discuss and share their gardening experiences and plants. As a result of such sharing, each one of us become better gardeners. Rosalind is also ardent supporter of the National Parks Board’s Community in Bloom initiative which promotes community gardening.

Rosalind and Wee Lee both busy with selecting plants for a garden project.

As the old Chinese saying goes, “Behind every successful man, there is a woman.” But in Rosalind’s case, it is the opposite. Mr Tan Wee Lee, who is Rosalind’s lifelong partner and a retired architect has been her pillar of support of sorts. With his professionally trained eyes, he helps Rosalind with her garden landscape design work, photography and choice of plants for her garden projects that she does for both Alexandra Hospital as well as other communities that needed her assistance. Mr Tan also gives the much needed emotional support to Rosalind and understands the heavy commitment she has in her ‘second’ job which she took up after retiring from her earlier, full-time job as a physiotherapist at Alexandra Hospital. What a loving couple!

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Andrew Tan’s Article on Balcony Gardening

Posted on December 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

On the recent Saturday, Andrew Tan wrote a very useful and insightful article that was published on Straits Times Life! on how one can actually decorate a tiny high-rise balcony with plants. As revealed in his article, Andrew is drawing upon his own personal experience where he generously shared with the reader on how he landscaped his balcony on his own that was just seven newspaper broadsheets wide at his new place. I have been to Andrew’s place recently and his balcony garden was a masterpiece that impressed me.

One great tip that Andrew had for apartment gardeners was how one can make the best use of the little precious space in today’s tiny balconies. To maximise space so that one can pack as many plants as he can into a tidy space, Andrew suggested that we do ‘vertical gardening’. In his balcony, he fixed a black aluminium grille akin to those we use for our windows that blended very well with the wall on one side of the balcony. He then hang numerous pots of peperomias and dracaenas onto the frame. The plants he chose were variegated which contrast quite well against the dark back-drop. In effect, one covers a cold-looking wall with plants.

To confer a sense of space to a tidy growing area, one should consider throwing in a couple of  large plant specimens. To do this, Andrew shoved in a dracaena and ficus tree into his balcony. Most of us, including myself, would have imagined that such inclusions would take up whatever available space from the already tidy balcony. The visual effect that was achieved as a result was really astonishing and contrary to our beliefs. Try it to know!

Most of balcony gardeners have the tendency to line their plants along the window ledge in a boring and monotonous row to catch the available light for one’s plants. I still vividly remember the terms that one of my gardening friends once used to call such gardens - ”farm” and “nursery”. Andrew’s balcony garden was a true garden. There is this element of aesthetics as you can see landscaping being done in the small space as shown by the thoughtful layering of healthy plants with different colours, leaf textures and heights.

I learnt alot from the earlier visit to Andrew’s place as well as from this recent article and the information gathered proved to be tremendously useful for me now as I have just moved into my new house where, for the first time in my life, I have a decent balcony to do gardening.

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Lily’s Talk at Jurong Regional Library

Posted on December 28, 2008 | Leave a comment

Lily gave her first gardening talk at the library Saturday afternoon and the topic she touched on was on hoys, something that was very close to her heart. She has been growing this group of vines for the past decade and has accumulated a lot of knowledge about their cultivation and growth requirement which Lily shared with the members of the public who came all the way to this library on western Singapore to attend her talk.

Lily’s first talk on hoyas was given at Jurong Regional Library.

The room was largely filled and I saw quite a number of familiar faces. Many thanks to Yong Kuan who came and also helped to take the pictures that I have put up on this blog. Quite a few members from the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum, such as Richmond and Teresa, were present to listen to Lily. I caught a glimpse of a handful of staff from the National Parks Board (NParks) too. Abby was also at the library where she brought along some seeds, such as those of the hoya, that were given out to the public to try their hands on to germinate at home.

The great turn-out at Lily’s talk.

Despite this was Lily’s first public talk given at the library, she did so like a ‘pro’. The presentation was well-paced and filled with enticing colourful photographs of hoya flowers. It was also delivered systematically and hence easy to follow for both novices and experts. Most importantly, this gardening talk was not overtly botanical as it can appear to be rather dry to some members in the audience. Sufficient notes about the botanical aspects of hoyas had been dispensed to ensure a basic know-how.

At the end of talk – Lily was handing out the Hoya feather-light seeds from Abby and answering questions that the audience might have for her.

With Lily’s talk, we ended a year’s worth of gardening talks that were brought to all plant enthusiasts as a result of a continued collaboration between NParks, National Library Board and Green Culture Singapore. We will get to see Lily, myself, as well as, a few more other members from various organisations coming on board next year to share our knowledge on plants, gardening and wildlife around us! Keep a look-out for our talks and do come to support us!

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