My e-Book now available online! Any gardening questions?

I guess many had read an article about me in the Straits Times Life Section publish on 31st October 09. Thanks to all who had emailed or posted to congratulate me, without your support, I will never had opportunities to share my experience with all of you. Many had also emailed me for the eBooks that I have authored and I had uploaded one of the eBooks, “Starting your Gardening Hobby” on my website! This eBook is based on my experience, touch on basic gardening techniques and skills you need for your everyday gardening.

There are no “standard” gardening skills or procedures to follow, my eBook will serve as a basic reference for you to begin your gardening journey. From there, you can come out with your unique gardening skills which suit best for you and your garden. So email me back with your success stories!

Click on the image to download the eBook! 

I had decided to dedicate a weekly post on answering your gardening questions. Every week, I will select two questions from my readers and post my opinions and suggestions for everyone to read. Hopefully everyone here can benefit from these questions! Once we had a good database of questions and answers, I will author another eBook and compiled all the frequently asked questions to share with everyone! So if you have any gardening question, do feel free to email me at DreamNGrowit@gmail.com.

I am now a CIB Ambassador!

I am honoured and pleased to announce that I have been nominated as one of the Community in Bloom (CIB) Ambassadors 2009 by National Parks Board. I received the award from Singapore Prime Minister Mr Lee Hsien Loong at the launch of Clean & Green Singapore 2010 on 30th October 2009.

Five other ambassadors, some are my good friends, contributed to community gardening in their very own community garden and activities. The Community in Bloom Ambassador Award is presented to individuals who have contributed through activities and events to foster the love for gardening to people from all walks. Ambassadors are passionate in gardening and go an extra mile to spread the gardening bug and help others to realise their green fingers.  They contribute time, effort and resources regularly and actively in gardening events.

I was extremely nervous to receive my award and I almost walked away without a photoshoot with Prime Minister Lee! Its definitely a proud moment when I saw my parents, who were there, had tears in their eyes.  The Award trophy is made of lead crystal and with words and my name etched inside it. The trophy weighed almost 3 kilograms and many joked that it is “ a heavy responsibility” of the future work for us!

I am very happy that my efforts and contributions during gardening events and in Green Culture Singapore forum have been recognised. Being the youngest Ambassador, I hope to attract more young people to take up gardening hobby, which can be of any scale and can be done anywhere! I would like to express my sincere thanks to teachers of Tanglin Secondary School and my ex-colleague Ai San for their nominations and all my friends who congratulate me on facebook and here in my blog, NParks and CIB for confeering me this prestigious Award, not forgetting my friends and members of Green Culture Singapore, especially my mentor, also CIB Ambassador 2008, Mr Wilson Wong for his guidance and support over the years!

Green Culture Singapore 5th Anniversary

The #1 Gardening Forum in Singapore, Green Culture Singapore, celebrated its 5th anniversary in a function room of a condominium. More than 70 members turned up at the event and many brought plants for exchange! Members also brought their home made food for potluck session. Everyone enjoyed the event and I believe many of us had gained more tips and ideas of growing plants!

Below is the video which shows the enthusiasm and support of Green Culture Singapore members:

 

A Beautiful Community Garden!

Today, I was honoured to be invited by the NParks’s Community-in-Bloom team to visit and judge a community garden. When I first reached the garden, I was very amazed to see how beautiful the garden was! There was a huge variety of plants grown in the garden, by the very enthusiastic gardeners in the neighbourhood.

There are more than 50 plots of well maintained plants which made our judging very difficult. Every plot is so well done and I can see a lot of effort were put in to the garden. Some gardeners came out with innovative ideas of putting up bamboo structures to grow their vines in different levels or tiers, reminding me of double-decker beds!

I was also told that some gardeners are maintaining more than one plot and some have up to four plots! As a community gardener myself, I know how difficult it was to keep a small plot of garden well maintained. I am very impressed of the hard work they put in to create this wonderful garden! 

I hope to see more of such community gardens being set up in neighbourhoods all around Singapore and get more people to try out their green fingers!

Gardentech Talk on Sunday!

It was a busy Sunday at Hortpark and crowded with people! I was invited by the Community-in-Bloom team of NParks to talk about carnivorous plants. This time, my talk was held at the much bigger multi-purpose hall. Around 80 people attended my talk and many are interested in growing carnivorous plants.

 

During the talk, I gave out copies of my two ebooks, one on carnivorous plants and another on starting your gardening hobby. I have given out free carnivorous plant seeds to those who participated during my quiz. Not only just carnivorous plant seeds, those who received my ebooks got a packet of seeds  (Star Glory, Ipomoea quamoclit).

Heartfelt thanks to Ai San and Cheryl, my friends from my ex-company to give me the necessary support I needed during the talk. Special thanks to Community-in-Bloom team of NParks and Mr Ng Cheow Keng for their wonderful logistic support. Thanks to Sandy and Cindy who provided the photos and plants for my talk!

It was a wonderful experience to see many like-minded people coming to this Gardentech event and learn more about gardening. There are also stores selling various plants and products which are new and innovative! Gardentech 2009 will end at 18th Aug (Tue). Do go down and experience it before it’s too late!

Gardentech 2009 Talk “Growing Carnivorous Plants”

Gardentech 2009, an event which exhibits horticultural technologies and garden plants will be held at Hortpark from 14th -18th August, which is a weeks from now. The event will not only showcase gardening technologies and equipments, but it will also a rare chance to get plants from overseas nurseries!

There will be lots of gardening talks held everyday and I am honoured to be invited to talk about carnivorous plants by the Community-in-Bloom staff of NParks. In the talk, I will share the basics of growing carnivorous plants and some gardening tips too.

                         

My 2 ebooks, “Growing Carnivorous Plants” and “Starting your Gardening Hobby” will be available during my talk. The first ebook I launched during my first gardening talk in March was a popular item and I have limited copies for my audience. I will bring along more of my ebooks this time round.

My gardewning talk will be held at the Multi-purpose Hall, Hortpark Visitors’ Centre, on 16th August (Sunday") at 2pm. Do come down early and visit the numerous booths at Gardentech 2009 too! For more information, do visit the Gardentech 2009 official website at: http://www.gardentech.com.sg.

My blog is also on Twitter now!

Being a new age gardener and bridging technology to gardening, I have integrated the new Twitter platform for my blog! Twitter is now a platform where users can ask questions or share their experiences and get answers and comments not only from me, but also other like-minded friends!

                                                           

I will also post short notes or announcements about latest gardening events on Twitter, which will also be shown on the Twitter link on the right panel of this page. As this is a new platform, there is a learning curve for everyone, there will be tweaks and bugs on this new platform and I hope everyone will eventually get used to it and use it as a platform to ask questions and share problems!

My Twitter link is http://twitter.com/Dreamandgrowit

Carnivorous Plants Talk at Hortpark!

Yesterday, I delivered my first full scale gardening talk on growing carnivorous plants. I was very surprised to see that such a big crowd turn up at Fruit Room despite the gloomy weather! I did not have enough handouts for all and thankfully Shirley from NParks, helped to print more copies for me. Thanks Shirley!

                                            

I was very glad that the audience there that day was a good mix of different ages. Over 70 people were there. It was very heartening to see children taking up gardening as their hobby and this really motivated me a lot. They are enthusiastic and inquisitive, asking me lots of questions and sharing their experiences with me!

Many thanks to my friends, Wilson, Xuan Hong, Uncle Eng Ong, Sandy and Elgin, all from Green Culture Singapore who came down to support me. I was very touched to see my colleagues from my attachment company, Ai San and Alicia with friend Kareen, make time to take photos and attend my talk.

                       

During the talk, I introduced various carnivorous plants which are easy to grow, like the popular Venus Flytrap, beautiful Sundews and Nepenthes.  I have prepared my ebooks to give out as gifts. The audience was amazed and “wowed” at many of these exotic photos taken by Sandy and Cindy.

 

Thanks for everyone’s support and hope to see you again in many subsequent gardening talks in the future!

Community-in-Bloom Induction

I attended the first Community-in-Bloom Induction programme for CIB Friends at Hortpark. It was held early in the morning and we started the programme with a mass planting at the CIB plot. Participants got to try planting plants into the ground and it was a very good ice-breaker session!

CIB Friends is an initiative launched by NParks for gardeners who go for an extra mile to foster gardening spirit and bringing people together. CIB Friends enable participants to help out and promote gardening during events. CIB friends can also share their experience by giving talks or help others to start a garden.

                                             

After the mass planting, we went to the event room where we were briefed about the upcoming events and how we can contribute as CIB friends. We also have a networking session where we exchange ideas and contacts with like minded gardeners.

It was a very exciting programme and we learnt a lot from one another. Gardening is never just a planting and watering job but more of a friendship bonding and social activity! Those who are interested to become a CIB friend can sign up at NParks CIB website.