Singapore Expats

I have great memories of working in a garden while growing up and want to give me preschooler the experience. In my ideal world I would live in a house with a garden - flowering plants, veggies, herbs and fruit trees and I would be eating what I grow.
Ofcourse I will not be doing any of it. So are there community gardens or spaces I can rent/lease for the purpose of gardening? Just small plots where I can grow some veggies?
Thank you

Gardening here isn't as easy as in temperate places:
A lack of shops for tools, seeds, fertilizer, lots of unknown bugs who'll eat your stuff before you can, terrible soil, too much water one day, too little the next - and working in full sweat might also not be your thing.
I did it anyway. The results over the years were dismal. But it gave me something to do and my wife had good laughs when I brought bags full of horse manure from the riding school (by bicycle - no taxi would take me!).

Here's a list of what I tried:
- radishes (didn't grow)
- cauliflower (didn't grow)
- watermelon (didn't grow)
- zucchini (didn't grow)
- sweet corn (didn't grow)
- papaya (never grew well, no idea what I did wrong - I got all of ONE tasteless fruit from three trees, which then died)
- honeydew (grew and gave ONE fruit, which a Singaporean friend called sensational)
- banana (grew well and gave more fruits than we could eat)
- tomatoes (grew, but not very well, tiny harvest)
- eggplants (grows and gives a reasonable harvest)
- lady fingers (grows well and gives lots of pods)
- parsley (didn't grow)
- dill (grew, but not well)
- mint (didn't grow)
- coriander (didn't grow)
- pandan (didn't grow)
- coconut (grew well, but takes years till harvest - I moved before that)
- chillies (grew well, but I don't like it hot)
- bitter gourd (grew well, but I don't like it)
- Italian basil (grew like a weed - we made lots of Pesto, despite extortionate prices for Parmesan cheese and olive oil)

My wife refused to help in the garden because of snakes, but those were more afraid of me than I was of them.
Unlike the mosquitos - I nearly died of blood loss.

I have seen some small plots in Jacob Ballas Children's Garden, I doubt they rent it, but maybe they run some classes over there? They do have one station explaining life cycle of a durian IIRC.


Beppi, please do not destroy my naive picture of snake-less Singapore. I did not meet any so far (8 years) and hope it will remain like that. Anyway, one more reason to hate gardening (my mum was a bit "forcing" me to do basic gardening when I was a kid and I really do not enjoy it).

beppi wrote:Gardening here isn't as easy as in temperate places:
A lack of shops for tools, seeds, fertilizer, lots of unknown bugs who'll eat your stuff before you can, terrible soil, too much water one day, too little the next - and working in full sweat might also not be your thing.
I did it anyway. The results over the years were dismal. But it gave me something to do and my wife had good laughs when I brought bags full of horse manure from the riding school (by bicycle - no taxi would take me!).

Here's a list of what I tried:
- radishes (didn't grow)
- cauliflower (didn't grow)
- watermelon (didn't grow)
- zucchini (didn't grow)
- sweet corn (didn't grow)
- papaya (never grew well, no idea what I did wrong - I got all of ONE tasteless fruit from three trees, which then died)
- honeydew (grew and gave ONE fruit, which a Singaporean friend called sensational)
- banana (grew well and gave more fruits than we could eat)
- tomatoes (grew, but not very well, tiny harvest)
- eggplants (grows and gives a reasonable harvest)
- lady fingers (grows well and gives lots of pods)
- parsley (didn't grow)
- dill (grew, but not well)
- mint (didn't grow)
- coriander (didn't grow)
- pandan (didn't grow)
- coconut (grew well, but takes years till harvest - I moved before that)
- chillies (grew well, but I don't like it hot)
- bitter gourd (grew well, but I don't like it)
- Italian basil (grew like a weed - we made lots of Pesto, despite extortionate prices for Parmesan cheese and olive oil)

You pretty much tried everything I like to think I can garden as I grew up in the tropics and have had gardens there. SO where do you garden?

gravida wrote:I have seen some small plots in Jacob Ballas Children's Garden, I doubt they rent it, but maybe they run some classes over there? They do have one station explaining life cycle of a durian IIRC.


Beppi, please do not destroy my naive picture of snake-less Singapore. I did not meet any so far (8 years) and hope it will remain like that. Anyway, one more reason to hate gardening (my mum was a bit "forcing" me to do basic gardening when I was a kid and I really do not enjoy it).

In my dream world Singapore is snake-less

Thanks for the info and I do know the "forcing" part as my brother hates gardening and I enjoy it

gravida wrote:Beppi, please do not destroy my naive picture of snake-less Singapore. I did not meet any so far (8 years) and hope it will remain like that.

Sorry, I have to take that bait:
Of course it's easy to not see any natural animals in urbanized and sanitized Singapore, but snakes there are many, even in the drains in front of your house. Most are harmless and the really dangerous ones exist only in the deep forest.
I've seen water snakes in monsoon drains, especially during rain. One was taking a sun bath on the fence next to Ulu Pandan bicycle path - many snakes in that area and many gardens too.
I found a snake skin on our patio and recently killed one in a (ground floor) bedroom - but that was in Bangkok.
The most common, and completely harmless, variety you'll encounter when gardening is the ground snake. It looks and lives like an earthwork, but closer inspcetion reveals that it has a dry, scaly skin and is not elastic. They are also as useful as earthworms, so I tried not to harm them.

Seriously, if you don't like to live with tropical animals, don't come to the tropics! You'll inevitably fight cockroaches and ants in the kitchen here (and you'll never win that battle) - and did I mention the mosquitoes?

wannamove wrote:SO where do you garden?

I had a terrace house with a tiny plot of green for a couple of years.
Nowadays there are community gardens between the housing blocks where you can volunteer. Ask at the National Parks Board, they are coordinating this effort.

beppi wrote:

wannamove wrote:SO where do you garden?

I had a terrace house with a tiny plot of green for a couple of years.
Nowadays there are community gardens between the housing blocks where you can volunteer. Ask at the National Parks Board, they are coordinating this effort.

Thank you for the information.

Beppi,

Thanks for the great list. I tried two different types of tomatoes. Only one grew tall, but then acted like it was dying of thirst and died. Do you know the type of tomatoes that you were able to grow?

They were the normal seeds you get at NTUC and other places.
But you need to improve the soil, they don"t grow in typical Singapore clay.

Sunflowers? They seem very capable of growing locally - I have not tried myself as I have serious personal problems with systematic plant watering but many nurseries sell them and the soil they come with is often the typical red-clay.

I think I saw sunflowers along Mandai Road.