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gardening

City

Upcoming workshop: Grow Your Own Natural Remedies Workshop

Here’s another workshop that I’m excited to announce. This is a collaboration with my friend Suekay, who runs DIY Culture (among other things) – a DIY supplies store for those who like making their own skincare products, candles, and gifts for others. More details below.

Learn to grow and use herbs and flowers to gently relieve minor skin ailments and body discomfort in this upcoming Grow Your Own Natural Remedies Workshop.

Organised by The Tender Gardener and DIY Culture, this 90-minute workshop includes a presentation on the properties and uses of various herbs and beneficial plants, as well as recipe demonstrations on making natural remedies. On the day, participants get to take home seeds of lemon balm, thyme, calendula, dandelion, and chamomile, a self watering pot, seed raising mix, notes, and even a skin soothing salve prepared during the session itself.

Reservation is required at $89 per person, seats are limited, so book your spot here!

Big thanks to our venue sponsor – Nong by Edible Garden City.

January 17, 2015 by Olivia

City

Announcing new workshops for January!

I’m really pleased to announce these two upcoming workshops on 31 January. The first is An Edible Flowers Workshop, which I first held in late November, looking at growing attractive and edible flowers, while the second is Flowers for the table – A gardening workshop, which highlights pretty and delicate cottage garden flowers that will grow in our climate.

An Edible Flowers Workshop serves as a guide to growing plants like Nasturtium, Roselle, Sunbird Sunflowers, Shungiku (Garland Chrysanthemum) and Calendula, for use in salads, tea and even as natural remedies.

Other than learning how to grow these flowers, I will cover its nutritional benefits, and also touch upon how they can be used for cooking and suggest some medicinal purposes.

As part of this 1-hour workshop, you will receive some seeds to get you started, a bag of Nong seed raising mix and an attractive self-watering pot.

Reservation is required at S$55 a head. Register here!

Flowers for the table – a gardening workshop is focused on growing cottage garden flowers which can then be harvested for display at home.

The flowers featured for this session include different kinds of Cosmos and Marigolds, Zinna, Teddy Bear Sunflowers, and Billy Buttons.

As part of this 1-hour workshop, you will receive some seeds to get you started, a bag of Nong seed raising mix and an attractive self-watering pot.

Reservation is required at S$65 per person. Register here!

Big thanks to Nong by Edible Garden City for sponsoring this venue.

February brings another workshop – Grow Your Own Natural Remedies Workshop, look out for it, and please join us!

January 9, 2015 by Olivia

City, Garden Stories

Garden Stories: Hedrick Kwan of Plant Visionz

Hedrick Kwan has a bold, charismatic and vivacious personality, which also translates to his gardening and landscaping style, and contemporary approach to creating food pairings. He runs Plant Visionz, a landscaping business specialising in edibles and orchids, and is a classically trained horticulturist.

Highly experienced, he takes a practical approach to landscaping projects but is also intuitive and open to try new, unexpected combinations, and he has a beautiful flagship project to show for it. Hedrick kindly gave me a tour around Portico, a restaurant off Alexandra Road, where he has grown a mix of edible plants for use by the establishment, such as Hyacinth Beans, Ceylon Spinach, Ulam Raja, Fennel, Sweet Potato Leaves, Limes, and mini Cucumbers.

He has also grown a wonderful medley of herbs, often together in containers with other plants, which is not only a clever space saving idea, but it also works in terms of companion planting, and looks great too. These herbs are used in cocktails also, basil flowers is one such example. Hedrick, who’s profession also includes being a Horticulture Culinarist – one who puts together food concepts and recipes using plants, also teaches cooking classes, and is a curious food forager, on the look out for edible plants off the sidewalks of Singapore.

January 3, 2015 by Olivia

City, Garden Stories

Garden Stories: Donald and Rachael Tan

I had the pleasure of visiting Donald and Rachael Tan’s green haven and corridor farm in Punggol recently, and was bowled over by how space-efficient and creatively laid-out it is. Between the couple, Donald maintains the plants, and Rachael harvests produce for the table.

Even though his corridor gets only two hours of sun each day, he has managed to grow a wide variety of plants. Beyond ornamental plants, he grows microgreens, herbs like purple basil, chocolate mint, thyme, dill, pandan, curry, sawtooth coriander etc, he has fruit plants such as gooseberry, grapes, gac fruit, and vegetables like kang kong, amaranth spinach, curly kale. There are so many different plants that I can’t list them all… in fact, I can’t remember them all!

I got to know Donald better when I caught up with the Edible Gardens team one day for a lunch discussion. We bonded over the subject of Daiso and its small but useful gardening section, and how he, as well as my parents enjoy buying supplies from there to supplement our gardening needs. It was after viewing photos of his green corridor from his phone, that I felt like I had to pop by for a look. The plastic baskets sitting on his verandah are all from Daiso, and he has lined them with geotextile, which provides good drainage while keeping all soil in place when watered.

November 7, 2014 by Olivia

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