Opening Remarks by Minister Desmond Lee at the Launch of the Community Garden Festival

Oct 24, 2020


A very good morning to all our fellow gardening enthusiasts. It is good to meet so many of you online today as part of this year’s Community Garden Festival (CGF).  Even though we are in the midst of COVID-19, we hope to reach even more people, and grow our community of gardeners.

Importance of community gardening

Today, we celebrate the gardening community’s efforts and achievements. Over the years, we have worked with many stakeholders to green Singapore, and our community gardeners have been an important part of these efforts. 

Since 2005, our community gardeners have set up more than 1,600 gardens island-wide. These gardens create pockets of urban greenery that beautify our neighbourhoods. They also have the potential to strengthen our urban ecosystems, by attracting and supporting birds, butterflies, and other pollinators. This will support our efforts to transform Singapore into a City in Nature.

In addition, many of our community gardeners grow edible plants in their gardens, from papayas and limes to herbs and spices. Doing so raises awareness of the value of food and the need to avoid food wastage. We also learn to better appreciate the efforts of our local farmers. 

Gardening with Edibles therefore complements our “30 by 30” push to produce 30% of our nutritional needs in Singapore by 2030. This is part of our strategy to strengthen food security and build greater social resilience.

Let me thank all of you, our community gardeners, for being active stewards of our environment. We will continue to work with you to set up even more community gardens in the years to come. 

More support for gardening

This morning, I would like to also share with you some upcoming plans that we have in store to further promote gardening, as part of our greening journey. 

NParks introduced the Allotment Garden Scheme in 2016 to provide more space for gardening. So far, we have made available more than 1,000 allotment garden plots for rent in 11 parks all across the island. There was an overwhelming response and all these plots were taken up quickly.  

Therefore, I am happy to share that we will have another 1,000 new allotment garden plots across nearly 20 parks and gardens ready by end-next year. Tomorrow, we will open more than 200 new plots up for balloting, in West Coast, Aljunied, Punggol, and Yishun! 

In addition, we will make available an additional 50,000 seed packets of beginner-friendly edible plants as an extension of our Gardening with Edibles initiative. These will be given out to participants who join us on our online activities and events this weekend, during the Community Garden Festival. 

NParks will also distribute 10,000 seed packets of edible plants which are more challenging to grow, such as capsicum, radish, and zucchini, to experienced gardeners like yourselves who attend NParks’ virtual gardening masterclasses. These masterclasses will be held over the next few months on a monthly basis.

To further support Singaporeans’ interest in edible gardening, NParks will provide more resources to grow this movement. 

We want to help interested organisations set up their own allotment gardens in our housing estates or beyond. Our new Allotment Garden Design Guidelines will share key design principles for such gardens. We are also launching Good Practices for Corridor Gardening, a collection of tips to grow edible plants along common corridors successfully and responsibly. Finally, our new guidelines on Horticulture Best Practices for Edible Gardening will help gardeners to grow edible plants healthily and in a sustainable and hygienic way.

We hope all these efforts will encourage all of us to try their hand at gardening, whether at home, in an allotment garden, or a community garden. This is a meaningful activity that can strengthen bonds between friends, families, and society. It can bring us hope and cheer during challenging times. Gardening and greenery can also improve our well-being and mental resilience. 

For those of you who would like to find out more, Professor Kua Ee-Heok, NUS Mind Science Centre and NParks recently published a book “Nature. Health. Happiness”. I want to congratulate Professor Kua and the team for the work on the importance of nature and the environment to human life.

Let me also take the opportunity to congratulate our young winners of the Every Child a Seed competition, which over 45 schools participated in. This celebrates our young gardeners’ success at growing various plants, their creativity, and the values learnt through their gardening journey.

For example, one of our competition winners initially faced difficulties in sprouting her roselle seed and tending to her plant. But with advice from her grandparents and some perseverance, her roselle plant did not just survive, but thrived. This just goes to show how gardening can bring together generations, and teach us to keep a hopeful spirit even in trying times.

The support of the community, and our people’s appreciation for nature, are integral parts of our journey to transform Singapore into a City in Nature. Thank you for being a part of this journey. 

Allow me to now say with a few words in Mandarin for our Mandarin-speaking friends:

非常欢迎大家参加我们一年一度的“社区花园节”。国家公园局这个周末为大家准备了一系列的线上活动,包括今天早上的“食用园艺大师班”。

我也借着今天这个机会,宣布公园局将进一步推广食用园艺。这包括向居民分发多6万份种子,以及推出有关食用园艺和走廊园艺的新指南。公园局也会扩大“租用园地计划”,提供多1000个花床,让居民申请来种植蔬果花草。另外,我们也将推出租用园地的设计指南,让有兴趣提供花床出租的机构和单位做参考。

我们希望这些新计划,能够吸引更多人加入园艺的大家庭。有了大家的支持,我们就有更大的推动力来实现新加坡成为“大自然里的城市”的愿景。我期待大家能和我们一起踏上这个绿色旅程。祝大家有个愉快的周末! 

I will now leave you in the hands of NParks’ gardening guru, Dr Wilson Wong. I wish everyone a happy Community Garden Festival!