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Garden Stories: Ganesh Kumar of Woodlands Botanical Garden

Known as Woodlands Botanical Garden, this award-winning community garden is situated on a hillside in Marsiling spanning 2500m2 over 9 storeys. Furnished with more than 200 varieties of plants, this is a wonderland for birds, bees, butterflies and other garden inhabitants. The good news is it is open round the clock to the public for visits.

Officially launched in July 2020, this showstopping garden is tended to by Woodlands Botanical Garden Chairman Ganesh, his father and a team of around 20 residents. Together they plant, prune, build garden structures and undertake general garden tasks, including feeding the budgerigars who have their own enclosure on the premises.

Even though this garden was established not long ago, it has already won three awards, including Garden of Year 2022. Flowers that can be found here include roses, Melastoma, Tecoma, Plumbago, Crossandra, Chalicevine, Musical Notes plant and a wide variety of Hibiscus.

Thanks to the diversity of plants and the community garden’s approach to stewarding the garden, visitors are treated to day-long sightings of bees, butterflies, birds, dragonflies and other pollinators. The pond has helped attract more wildlife to the garden, in addition, Ganesh believes in letting nature take its course, and does not intervene when caterpillars and snails make a meal of the plants.

Ganesh has built a few gardens throughout the years, beginning with his grandfather’s garden, a community garden in Hougang, followed by a garden in one of NTU’s halls, where he was the residential mentor. With this garden, he hopes that it can serve as a mental wellness garden for others to enjoy.

Read on to find out more about Ganesh and Woodlands Botanical Garden.

February 15, 2023 by Olivia

City, Garden Stories

Garden Stories: Urban permaculture advocate Nova Ceceliana Nelson of Goodman Community Farm

Nova Ceceliana Nelson is a permaculture designer who wants to help people grow food regardless of how small their space is. At the Goodman Community Farm in Singapore, she uses the garden to showcase what urban permaculture looks like, where upcycled materials are used, and how one can create closed loop systems to turn waste into valuable resources.

At this space where food growers, artists and the community converge, she organises workshops for children and adults to connect them to nature and growing food.

The Goodman Community Farm consists of a forager’s garden and community microfarm. At the forager’s garden, there is a herb spiral, mandala garden, pond, three-bay leaf compost area and wormery, while the community microfarm is a place to test out different methods of growing food.

Nova sees waste as a resource and collects landscape waste, cardboard, logs, coffee grounds and food waste from a café on the premises and uses it around the garden. Nothing goes to waste here. Find out more from this video interview I conducted with her!

April 3, 2022 by Olivia

City, Garden Stories, Stories

Community rooftop garden tour with compost master Ong Chun Yeow

Ong Chun Yeow is an avid composter, with two compost set ups at home – an aerobic one in his HDB corridor and an anaerobic one in his kitchen – plus a vermicompost bin situated at his rooftop community garden allotment. Also, when he was working part-time at the Funan Urban Farm, he set up a large aerobic compost bin on their rooftop garden which is still active. All his compost goes back into the different gardens where the compost set ups are situated, creating a closed loop where nothing is wasted. If you are looking into composting at home in Singapore, you should definitely check out his approaches.

Chun Yeow believes in space efficient gardening, and having a wide selection of plants to encourage biodiversity. With a limited space of 4×1 metres, he experiments with bio-intensive growing, cramping as many plants as he can while sustaining soil fertility. Through this method he has succeeded in having a high yield with minimal inputs. He had his soil tested not too long ago and it was found to be very fertile with a high level of nitrogen. To find out more, watch the interview I did with him below.

This is an update from my last interview with him 5 years ago, to see how his garden has evolved over time, read the interview here.

January 7, 2022 by Olivia

City, Garden Stories

Garden Stories: Marcus Koe of Habitat Collective

When Marcus Koe joined the neighbourhood Jalan Senang Community Garden in Kembangan, Singapore, he was looking to grow vegetables in-ground. He was surprised to find that nobody was keen to take on a large plot of land near the entrance of the garden, which was filled with grass and weeds. He requested for this spot and started to implement permaculture methods on it.

Situated on a slope, rainfall makes its way into this part of the garden first. As the soil was compacted, this area was waterlogged on rainy days, and on sunny days it was hard. It was a challenge for him to grow vegetables here and he found that plants would not thrive in the beginning.

He decided to use a banana circle as a solution. He planted a cluster of bananas in the formation of a circle, with a 50cm deep ditch in the middle, and filled it with leaves and other organic materials, including compost that he makes together with others in the community garden.

This ditch also functions as a convenient place for him to compost his bulky garden waste. It also allows water to collect in there, meaning there is no stagnant water. In addition the ditch functions like a sponge, releasing water to the plants around it when required. As the organic matter breaks down, it feeds the plant and improves the soil.

The bananas started to do well and he grew other plants around it, and designed the garden around the bananas, using materials such as logs and leaves from the immediate vicinity of the garden. He also planted leguminous plants like pigeon pea as a nitrogen fixer, and as It matured, he would also prune the branches and leave it on the ground to add fertility to the soil. To find out more, watch this interview!

June 5, 2021 by Olivia

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