S.Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia 3 Apr 09;
SINGAPORE: The Singapore Botanic Gardens first took root in 1859. Since then, it has evolved into a much-loved civic space and one of the country's top attractions. To celebrate its 150th anniversary, a series of activities have been lined up to connect plants with people.
Singapore's Botanic Gardens had an important role to play in the rubber revolution in Southeast Asia.
The first 22 rubber seedlings were given to the Singapore Gardens by the world-renowned Kew Gardens of the United Kingdom and this contributed to the economic boom in the region.
Not many Singaporeans may be aware of these milestones. So the Singapore Botanic Gardens is having an exhibition entitled "The Seed that Changed the World" till the end of this month.
It has also documented the Botanic Gardens' 150-year history.
It will be holding year-long events to educate and engage the people on the economic importance and beauty of the Gardens. That is why the theme for the celebrations has been aptly coined as 'Connecting Plants and People'.
National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said: "The Gardens must and remain a Peoples' Garden. It must remain a place that families and their loved ones can come and share, and it must be a place where the community can come and bond because it is a custodian of our collective memories."
The day's event, described as "A Tale of Two Gardens," also paid tribute to the close ties Singapore's Botanic Gardens has with its London counterpart, which is celebrating its 250th birthday.
To mark the collaboration, special trees were planted simultaneously in Singapore and London, with guests watching the event via video conference. - CNA/vm
Treasury of plants
Straits Times 4 Apr 09;
DR CHIN See Chung, director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, leafs through plant samples at its herbarium.
'Here is where the real history is,' he says.
Some of the 650,000 dried plant samples in the Botanic Gardens' herbarium date back to 1790, 80 years before the plant archive was officially established.
That is because herbaria - institutes that store plant specimens - swop their samples like collectors' trading cards.
There is a sprig of jasmine from 1700s India collected by Moravian missionaries.
There is a century's collection of ginger from Penang, Perak and Pahang, dating from the 1890s to the 1990s.
Some of the plants once grew here, but are now extinct.
Once plucked, the samples are pressed in newspaper and dried on low heat in an oven.
It is a recipe that ensures the plants last 'almost forever, without chemical preservatives', says Dr Chin.
The herbarium is open to the public by appointment, and to researchers from all over the world, who can borrow the plant samples - desiccated leaves, twigs, fruit and all - to study.
But the herbarium's most important work is collecting and documenting the hugely diverse flora of Malesia.
Malesia is a term used by botanists to refer to a part of South-east Asia with characteristic types of flora. It spans Singapore, parts of Malaysia and parts of Indonesia and the Philippines.
The Botanic Gardens is part of an international project, coordinated by the National Herbarium in the Netherlands. to catalogue the region's flora.
But so far, less than 25 per cent of the perhaps 50,000 species have been documented.
'Everybody is desperately trying to document the flora here before it's all lost,' Dr Chin says.
GRACE CHUA
Helping Botanic Gardens blossom
Jalelah Abu Baker, Straits Times 4 Apr 09;
THE Singapore Botanic Gardens have a strong supporter in Lady Yuen-Peng McNeice, 92.
Among her donations to the gardens is a collection of bromeliad plants in 1994. Besides a book commemorating the gardens' 150th anniversary launched yesterday, she had sponsored another book on the attraction in 1989.
The mother of two and grandmother of four has gone on African safaris to enjoy nature and take photographs, for which she was made an associate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.
Born in Malaysia, she grew up surrounded by flora and fauna. She moved to Singapore in 1947 when she married Sir Percy McNeice, the first president of the City Council here. He died in 1998.
She has not lost touch with nature even now. She still does her own gardening at her Holland Road house every afternoon. It is filled with pretty blooms and pandan, lemongrass and belimbing, a fruit commonly used in Nonya cooking.
Lady McNeice said: 'I try to collect unusual plants that I knew during my childhood.' She also has plants from Brazil and the United States, some of which she has given to the Botanic Gardens.
She first saw bromeliads - a family of flowering plants that includes the pineapple - on display at the Chelsea Flower Show and was impressed by their shapes and colours, thinking them suitable for Singapore.
So when a Californian nursery wanted to sell its bromeliads, she bought them for the Botanic Gardens. The 320 species have since been planted near the orchid garden, in a site that now bears her name.
A tree at the Botanic Gardens has also been dedicated to her for all her contributions. When asked which was her favourite spot at the gardens, she said with a smile: 'I don't have one, everything is so beautiful.'
