Speech by 2M Desmond Lee at the Singapore Garden Festival Awards Night

Jul 20, 2018

A very warm welcome to all of you, including our guests and friends who have come from near and afar. I am delighted to be here at the Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) Awards Night.

The SGF was born out of a desire to celebrate and cultivate our national passion for gardening and horticulture back in 2006. Since then, the Festival has grown by leaps and bounds. In 2016, it attracted over 400,000 visitors. This was twice the number that attended our very first event.

We have built on this momentum to expand the Singapore Garden Festival and reach out to even more people. The Orchid Show, which was launched this April, presents Singapore’s rich and diverse heritage of orchids, as well as award-winning plants and competitive landscape displays by local and regional orchid growers. Next year, we can look forward to the inaugural Horticulture Show at the Jurong Lake Gardens, which will highlight the design and cultivation skills of our industry, our students, and gardening enthusiasts.

These two shows will complement the anchor Festival here at Gardens by the Bay. For over a decade, this Festival has dazzled visitors with masterpieces from all over the world. It has achieved global acclaim, and is now one of the top garden shows.   

I am pleased to know that Singapore Garden Festival continues to attract top landscape and floral design talents. This year, we are proud to host some 40 designers, who are among the best in their profession. These include 15 prominent local designers. For instance, we will get to see the floral artistry of Mr Keith Lin. Mr Lin was the first Singaporean in recent years to win a Gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. This is no mean feat as it is the world’s most prestigious flower show.

I know that everyone here has put in a lot of hard work into your displays over the last week. We are happy to recognise your creations with tonight’s series of awards. Given the impressive calibre of all participating designers, I believe our judges must have had a tough time picking the winning entries! I look forward to appreciating your beautiful creations later this evening. The judges have commented that the show gardens have reached new high standards. This year, we have two repeat winners – Leon Kluge and Inch Lim who won Gold at SGF 2016. They have clinched Gold again this year, and were awarded Best of Show for their gardens. To add on, both of them also won the Horticulture Excellence award.

The show gardens that we see tonight are a team effort. The designers have worked closely with our local landscape companies to bring their creative concepts to life. Kiat Lee Landscape & Building Pte Ltd is one such company. Over the years, they have helped renowned designers translate their ideas from paper to winning show gardens.  This year, English designer Tom Massey has partnered them to implement his Fantasy Garden display. Through such collaborations, the Festival promotes the exchange of professional expertise among different players in the landscape industry.

For this industry to continue thriving in Singapore, we will need to build up the skills of the next generation. That is why NParks has organised the Landscape Design Challenge for ITE and polytechnic students as part of the Singapore Garden Festival. The students will have to create a garden from scratch with limited budget and time. The teams will also have to maintain their plots to ensure that they are in tip-top condition throughout the Festival. This allows them to exercise their horticultural knowledge, creativity, and teamwork. To design and implement not only a beautiful show garden, but one that is practical for our climate, and sustainable throughout the entire show.

We also want the SGF to showcase and promote community involvement in the co-creation of our biophilic City in a Garden. For example, the Gardeners’ Cup competition showcases the talents of our community gardeners. We all look forward to presenting the awards tomorrow morning and seeing some of these Gardens on display. New this year is a “Floral Jamming” event, where visitors can participate in floral arrangement sessions led by professionals. That is how we bring members of the public, and lure them in to this community and to the parks.

I’m sure that everyone is excited for the big opening tomorrow. I hope you will find some time to check out some of the other highlights of the Festival. For instance, over 70 displays have been carefully curated in a tropical rainforest garden with simulated mountains, valleys, and open plains. There also is the ASEAN Garden, which marks Singapore’s ASEAN chairmanship this year with colourful blossoms symbolic of the nations of Southeast Asia. The Orchid Extravaganza is yet another visually stunning display.  Conceptualised by local film-maker Royston Tan, it is inspired by his childhood and Singapore’s melting pot of cultures.

Let me conclude by thanking all of you who have helped make the Singapore Garden Festival possible. A big thank you to our volunteers, students, and our many community gardeners. Designers and participants in the competitive categories, and members of the landscape, gardening, and floral industries – a big thank you to you also.  Grateful to our sponsors, whose generous contributions will give over 8,000 beneficiaries from various charities this opportunity to enjoy the Singapore Garden Festival. And last, but most certainly not least, our colleagues from NParks and Gardens by the Bay, who have worked tirelessly – sometimes under very hot conditions, to curate the show and create a memorable visitor experience.

I wish all of you a wonderful time here at the Singapore Garden Festival, and I hope you take the opportunity also to enjoy the rest of Singapore. Thank you and good evening.