Ong Joo Heng, Jason / Garden Leader @ Toh Yi Community Garden

Jason has been gardening for over 20 years and is one of the garden leaders at the award winning Toh Yi Community Garden.  He inspires garden volunteers and residents with his expert gardening skills and knowledge. He is highly skilled in growing both edible and ornamental plants and his horticulture skills were recognised at NParks’ Community Garden Edibles Competition and Horticulture Competition respectively.

As someone who leads by example on active aging, Jason continues to pick up new skills and knowledge such as different methods of composting and conducting outreach on different media platforms. He has partnered NParks to help grow the gardening movement by conducting numerous workshops, roadshows and gardening events over the last two years. Jason is an engaging gardener who demonstrates how one can age actively by participating in gardening activities and building social bonds within the community.

Chia Yen Ling, Celeste / Garden Leader @ Compassvale Gardens RC Community Garden

Celeste is the garden leader at Compassvale Gardens RC Community Garden and actively promotes the love for gardening through conducting outreach programmes and workshops for gardeners and residents. She is skilled in corridor and indoor gardening, and provides advice on setting up small indoor gardens and plant corners. She inspires gardeners and residents by posting photos of her plants in the community garden and corridor garden on the ‘SG Container Gardening’  Facebook group.

Celeste also helps foster the ‘kampong spirit’ amongst her garden volunteers and residents. Twice a year, she packs seeds for edible plants from her garden and shares them with residents who are new to gardening, to spur their interest in gardening. She restructured Compassvale Gardens RC community garden from using individual plots to a thriving communal edible garden brimming with edibles such as bitter gourd, brinjal, chilli, lady’s finger, tomato and leafy vegetables.

Fung Kah Wai, Roy / Garden Leader @ Tanjong Pagar Spottiswoode Park RC

Roy is the garden leader at Spottiswoode Park RC Community Garden where he has been gardening for over 5 years. With his friendly and affable personality, gardeners and residents frequently approach him to seek advice on edible plants and gardening issues.

Roy manages and engages with over 70 volunteers in the community garden and has created a unique way of reaching out to the garden volunteers and residents through an app called ‘HOLA’.  He advertises gardening events on the app which allows for participation from more residents, beyond Spottiswoode estate. He has hosted more than 150 visitors to his garden in 2022 and shared on various topics, including vermi-composting and making compost using food waste. Roy is working on making gardening more accessible to seniors in the estate with physical and mobility issues, through vertical gardening systems for edibles.

Lim Kian Lam / Garden Leader @ Mulberry RN Community Garden

Kian Lam has been gardening for over twenty years and is the garden leader at Mulberry RN Community Garden in Fengshan. He leads an active group of over 50 garden volunteers of all ages. In addition, Kian Lam is the Green Ambassador under Fengshan Constituency for the East Coast Plan, and educates residents on sustainability and green issues.

Kian Lam is a huge advocate of green practices such as to reduce, reuse and recycle, and encourages residents in Fengshan to participate in events such as tree planting and gardening workshops.  With a flair for growing a wide range of edible and ornamental plants, Kian Lam often leads the gardeners to share their harvest with residents. Over the last two years, he has conducted over 20 workshops and sharing sessions (both physical and over Zoom) on composting, plant propagation, and how to produce eco-enzymes using fruit and vegetable waste.

David Yu / Garden Leader @ Boon Lay Zone F RN Community Garden

David is the garden leader at Boon Lay Zone F community garden. With over 5 years of gardening experience, David has made many contributions to promote gardening in community gardens across Boon Lay. Furthermore, as the Lead of the Boon Lay Environmental Workgroup, he has spearheaded grassroot efforts in Boon Lay by leading nature-related events organised by the Nature Kakis

He has raised awareness for biodiversity conservation and tree planting events under the OneMillionTrees movement, and kick started therapeutic horticulture workshops in Boon Lay. David has activated many gardening spaces in Boon Lay and encouraged residents to take up gardening at allotment gardens, on multi-storey carpark roof decks and along corridors.

Hay Qing Hui / Assistant Instructor @ APSN Tanglin School

Qing Hui works as an Assistant Instructor at APSN Tanglin School. He is passionate about greening and caring for the environment, and encourages his students to reduce, reuse and recycle.  Qing Hui led his students to win a series of Community in Bloom Awards, achieving Gold, Platinum and Diamond for the school’s gardens over the years.

He uses his skills and capabilities to empower and nurture young people with various abilities to embrace gardening to promote wellness. He inspires and encourages students to take up careers in landscaping and gardening, and encourages them to continue learning to boost their self-confidence. In addition to conducting numerous gardening-related workshops within the school, Qing Hui has also conducted workshops at public libraries on plant propagation and terrariums. 

Ms Angie Wong Chiew Shiar

Angie Wong Chiew Shiar / Garden Leader @ Rainforest Garden

Angie’s passion is gardening and giving back to the community.  She is the garden leader at the Rainforest Garden located within her condominium. She is also a member of the Choa Chu Kang Park community garden where she leads the gardeners to come together to organise Gardeners’ Get-Together to celebrate their bountiful harvest. The gardeners have been able to donate more than 200kg of their edible harvest to social organisations such as Bethany Nursing Home, SASCO Eldercare Centre and childcare centres.  Encouraged by the success of this garden’s give back initiative, she partnered with a nearby My First Skool pre-school to share edibles grown in the garden with the children who participated in decorating garden containers.  

Ms Joanora Ng Siew Lan

Joanora Ng Siew Lan / Senior Trainer @ APSN Delta Senior School

Joanora is a senior trainer in horticulture at the  Association for Persons with Special Needs (APSN) Delta Senior School. She has designed and conceptualised many internal and external greenery projects within the school compound to benefit students in horticulture programmes at APSN.  Together with her students, Joanora reconceptualised and redesigned an existing garden within the school into a sensory garden.  This involved introducing therapeutic elements into the  garden to enable students with special needs to take  time out from their lessons to calm  themselves and enjoy a relaxing environment. Joanora has been instrumental in organising many horticultural events and activities for the benefit of her students such as organising a five-week long after school sessions on therapeutic horticulture and mindfulness. The aim of these sessions was to assist students with their development needs and to enhance their ability to focus in class. 

Joshua Liang / Garden Member @ Bukit Batok Zone 2 RC Cosy Garden

Joshua gardens actively in the edible garden at Cosy Garden. He manages the weekly gardening activities and leads in producing educational posters and digital materials to engage residents and youths. He also oversees new projects such as edible garden, foliage garden, butterfly garden, orchid garden and green walls and curates events to attract more youth to gardening and horticulture. He recently led the corridor gardening sessions at Boon Lay Constituency as one of the speakers on propagating and growing edible plants at home.  He regularly hosts tours of Cosy Garden for school children and teaches them about the benefits of gardening as well as the use of orange peel to produce food enzyme which helps to reduce food wastage.

Norasikin Bte Supelan / Garden Member at Al-Mukminin Mosque

Norasikin is a garden member at the Al-Mukminin Mosque where she guides the gardening team to maintain their edible garden.  She has been instrumental in providing gardening advice and guidance to the garden volunteers on the types of plants and edibles to introduce into the garden.  Since the start of the Covid -19 pandemic, she has been sharing horticulture techniques with the garden volunteers using an online platform. With her friendly and cheerful personality, she was able to motivate and lead a group of volunteers to set up an edible garden for Madrasah Al-Arabiah Green Club. She has been actively supporting NParks events such as corridor gardening in housing estates and Community Garden Edible Gardens Competition. She also shares her gardening interest on Facebook and reaches out to members of the public on plant propagation and shares her gardening tips.

Kevin Tan / Garden Leader @ ActiveSG Community Garden Urban Farm

Kevin is the gregarious garden leader at the ActiveSG Community Garden Urban Farm in Woodlands Sports Centre. Kevin and his team initiated the first edible garden within a sports centre in Singapore. From a humble handful of three volunteers, his pool of volunteers has grown to over 20 active gardeners who not only partake in sports but also engage in gardening to keep themselves healthy. Together with his team, they have engaged over 900 students. He has also worked with charity organisations like Metta Homes, and senior care homes to provide advice on growing edibles. Kevin leads his team to actively reach out to schools, pre-schools and other sports centres to set up their own gardens by providing advice on design and plant choices. They have helped to set up new gardens in Yio Chu Kang Sports Centre, Toa Payoh Sports Centre, Marsiling Secondary School and Canberra Secondary School. Recently, Kevin led his gardening volunteers in Woodlands Sports Centre to clinch the Garden of the Year Award in CIB Awards 2021.

Mr Prakash Jethwa

Prakash Jethwa / Garden Leader @ Waterview NC Veggie Garden

Prakash is a garden leader at Waterview NC Veggie Garden and has been gardening for over five years.  He spearheaded the initial planning, set up and implementation of the Waterview NC Veggie Garden and encouraged more residents to join the garden and make it a success. Prakash regularly arranges seedlings, fertilisers and tools for the gardeners to use, and invested time in teaching the gardeners on how to do vertical gardening in a sustainable way. This involved optimising the existing garden set up, making feasible changes, adding boxed planter areas for planting, plumbing for irrigation and support structures for fruiting plants. Prakash also started a ‘Garden-To-Plate’ photo initiative on a WhatsApp chat group where members could show their harvest and the interesting culinary dishes created with them. Through these activities, Prakash has engendered strong community bonds among residents.

Ms Sharon Tay

Sharon Tay / Garden Leader @ Punggol Cascadia Sky Garden

Sharon is the Garden Leader at Punggol Cascadia Sky Garden.  She started her open roof garden through HDB’s ‘Friendly Faces Lively Places’ fund.  Together with the other garden members, she conceptualised the new community garden and developed  a series of engaging gardening related programmes to enthuse residents and students.  Her knowledge and enthusiasm in promoting edible gardening was notable and she was featured regularly in Punggol’s community magazine which is disseminated to all residents in Punggol SMC.

She also participated in an interview for urban farming research by Yale-NUS on the Punggol Cascadia garden model. Sharon is able to contextualise the knowledge learnt from overseas homestead and farms about organic farming which she had shared with more than 150 residents. Beyond the garden she initiated, she has also provided guidance to several other groups to start their journey in setting up community gardens.

Mr Tan Soon Kiong Desmond

Tan Soon Kiong Desmond / Garden Leader @ Our Kampong Farm

Desmond is the garden leader at “Our Kampong Farm” a rooftop community garden in Bedok for about 7 years and has hosted many gardening groups in his garden to share his extensive knowledge on edible growing. Together with his fellow gardeners, he converted the peg trays of previously growing grass to a wide array of leafy edibles. He has actively guided groups from diverse backgrounds such as schools for special needs students and private estate community gardening groups to grow edible plants.

He is also knowledgeable in DIY irrigation set-ups and often guides new gardening groups that are interested to start irrigation and water conservation projects in their gardens. Beyond hosting visits, Desmond also assists other new groups with designing of community gardens including rejuvenation of Kaki Bukit Green RC and Geylang Serai CC community gardens. Desmond regularly conducts gardening workshops for his new and existing community gardeners at least twice a year.   

Mr Teng Boon Bee

Teng Boon Bee / Garden Leader @ Hillview Vantage NC Garden

Mr Teng is the garden leader of Hillview Vantage NC and has been gardening for 20 years. Despite having many years of experience, he is a strong believer of lifelong learning and has attended urban farming courses by ITE East. He actively applied his knowledge to grow his edible plants better and shared the knowledge with more gardeners. 

Mr Teng enjoys experimenting innovative ways to grow plants such as creating planters with used pots and even created an orchid display wall with wine bottles. He also believes in the therapeutic benefits of gardening. He received training on therapeutic horticulture from NParks and today he leads therapeutic horticulture sessions for seniors and caregivers living in the vicinity. Some of these sessions are aimed to improve fine motor skills through involving the seniors in soil mixing or simple propagation techniques such as stem cutting.

Mr Daryl Tan

Daryl Tan / Garden Leader @ Tampines Arcadia RC Garden

Daryl Tan has been a key leader of Tampines Arcadia RC garden since 2014. He often shares his gardening knowledge with the other community gardeners in Tampines GRC. Working with Peoples’ Association, he also helped to launch the Community Fridge at the café corner near their RC sharing excess harvest with residents in the vicinity.

He became the project lead for the community garden when the estate was going through the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP) in Tampines Central in 2019. After 8 months of rejuvenation, Tampines Arcadia RC garden was transformed into a fenceless, wheelchair friendly garden for the enjoyment of all the residents.  Constantly looking to introduce new programmes, Daryl introduced vermicomposting to his garden group. He continues to conduct regular gardening and harvesting sessions for both his garden group and residents.

Mr Victor Koh

Victor Koh / Garden Leader @ Chartwell NC Community Garden

Victor is the affable garden leader of Chartwell NC community garden. He has been gardening for over 40 years and participated in various NParks events such as Gardeners’ Cup where he gained new plant knowledge and shared it with fellow gardeners. He manages 2 open concept community gardens in the Chartwell neighbourhood parks which he lovingly takes care with his fellow gardeners for the benefit of the residents.

Victor enjoys sharing his gardening knowledge especially about indoor gardening techniques at regular sharing sessions or community events such as Gardeners’ Day Out and Chartwell NC events.  

Mr Shaji Maroli Vadara

Shaji Maroli Vadara / Garden Leader @ Ayer Rajah Teban Gardens RN

Shaji has been the garden leader at Ayer Rajah Teban Gardens RN for about 8 years. Having successfully experimented with hydroponics and DIY planter beds, he was able to share his knowledge of irrigation systems and vertical greenery with all his gardeners and residents that are keen to start similar projects.

Beyond this garden, Shaji also helped to start community gardens at foreign worker dormitories including JTC Recreation Centre where he helped with the design, plant choices and DIY irrigation system. Shaji enjoys sharing gardening knowledge and often conducts workshops such as orchid propagation, use of drainage cells as planters for residents and students .

Mr Dominic Seow

Dominic Seow / Garden Leader @ Hewlett Packard Community Garden

Dominic Seow is the garden leader at Hewlett Packard (HP) community garden. Trained as an engineer, he is passionate about gardening and led the set-up of the hydroponic vertical greenery system in HP’s rooftop by leveraging his engineering knowledge. He also applied his knowledge in 3D printing to create the pot holders for vertical planting and developed software to monitor the nutrient levels of the water in the system. 

To date, he has hosted several gardening groups in HP to share about the hydroponics and DIY vertical greenery systems and his gardening journey. Dominic has shared his horti-tech knowledge with other gardens including pre-school gardens. Together with pre-school teachers, he built irrigation systems and DIY composting bins for the children to learn about food waste composting.

Ms Peggy Leow

Peggy Leow / Garden Leader @ Tampines Palm Spring RC Garden

Peggy Leow is the garden leader at Tampines Palm Spring RC garden, and she has been gardening for 30 years. Despite her hearing impairment and having to care for a special-needs child, she actively engages with the residents to share her love and experience for gardening.

She is proficient in sign language and is able to lip read and interact with other gardeners through body language. Through her actions, she inspired other residents to join her in gardening. Her bubbly personality enables her to interact well with kindergarten children to share her harvest and knowledge. 

Mr Roseli Bin Rasiman

Roseli Bin Rasiman / Garden Leader @ ST Engineering Land Systems

To promote a stronger gardening culture among his colleagues, he organised annual garden competitions among the six community gardens in the ST group. Beyond ST, he has gone the extra mile to promote gardening to students of Fuhua Primary and My First Skool. His passion for gardening have helped inspire a new generation of community gardeners.

Teh Mooi Yan / Garden Leader @ Choa Chu Kang Park Gardening Interest Group

As a former lecturer, her passion for learning and sharing motivated her to enrol in gardening classes and therapeutic horticulture (TH) training, to equip herself with the skills to conduct TH sessions and gardening workshops for new gardeners. Her warm and engaging disposition has attracted over 50 volunteers to join her in promoting healthy eating using freshly harvested edible produce from her community garden.

Mr Mohan s/o Krishnamoorthy

Mohan s/o Krishnamoorthy / Teacher, Hougang Primary School

Through these projects, Mohan has been able to influence and guide fellow educators and schools to set up new gardens, and share his hands-on skills. Beyond the school, he has also trained gardeners in Meranti home @ Pelangi Village to set up their own DIY green wall, to benefit their residents and to help bring nature closer to them.

Mdm Asitikoma Binte Sumali

Asitikoma Binte Sumali / Garden Member @ Yishun Clover Garden

She has also facilitated and engaged VIPs, residents and visitors at the OTH Garden. She specialises in growing edibles (mainly vegetables and herbs) and propagates ornamental flowers. Always a keen learner, Koma attended the MND Leadership camp in 2014 and her positive outlook has enabled her to influence fellow gardeners, young and old.

Julia Liew Ah Sau / Garden Leader @ Bukit Panjang Zone 8 RC Community Garden

Julia is also one of the main advisors for Bukit Panjang Town Council, guiding them in garden design and standards. Through this collaborative effort, she helped to create more sustainable community gardens, allowing gardeners and residents to enjoy these green spaces in their community. She is an attentive leader, who is always ready to listen and provide advice on anything regarding edible gardening.

Mr Darren Ng Boon Kiang

Darren Ng Boon Kiang/ Garden Leader @ Siglap South CC Gardening Interest Group

He spreads his knowledge on orchids through workshops and social media. To date, he has conducted over six specialised workshops covering topics such as orchid care and herbs cultivation. Being a key leader in orchids, ferns and ornamental sections, he is able to engage members of public through the sharing of gardening knowledge.