An Urban Forest Garden

We live in a Tropical rainforest region, but our cities have been highly developed to create the same situation as any other city in the world, densely populated and with congestion even in the surrounding suburbs. However there still exist pockets of areas in the city that escaped the concrete development that happened in the past decade. In the city of Kuala Lumpur itself there are 6 areas gazetted, as Urban Forest and developers cannot encroach into them. There are also areas, where in the old days of colonisation, our colonial forefathers built residences without totally uprooting trees or changing the land profile. Although the areas are no longer considered forest, they still retain some of the features of a tropical rainforest ambience.

One such area is Bukit Tunku or Tunku Hills, named after our late first Prime Minister. Residences in the area mostly belonged to multinational companies and as the expatriates appreciated the tropical rainforest surroundings they kept the properties and surroundings as close to the original landscape as could be practical. Now new owners who bought over rebuilt most of the properties and gradually the landscape is changing.

The residence we are featuring was considered a new building compared to the original houses but the owners being naturalists themselves built their home to merge into the surroundings. They did minimal cutting and left many old forest trees still in the garden area. They add more forest species to replace those that fell or got taken down by our tropical storms.

Mosses: The Minuscule Masters of Moisture

They are everywhere yet we hardly notice them. More often than not we step on them, whether hurrying along a city pavement or negotiating a trail in the forest. Every now and then we might marvel at the lush green velvet-like carpets some of them produce. In our homes we quite frequently try to get rid of them. And most of all we understand very little of their purpose on this planet.

These curious creatures, of which a multitude of tiny individuals are needed to create a patch visible to the naked human eye, are mosses. Just about every gardener will sooner or later detect their presence on the outside of a ceramic pot, in the crevices of walking paths and the lower side of branches, even in between tufts of grass in shaded areas of the lawn. They just appear, their spores carried along by currents of air. Spores eventually land on a suitable substrate where they germinate, grow and multiply, at first invisible until one day we spot them as small deep green cushions.

Nong Nooch Tropical Garden

Nong Nooch Tropical gardens, in the south of  Thailand is famous not only for having large collections of palms, orchids and other ornamentals, but also for the fact that it is a private Gardens able to be self sustaining. We visited the gardens to see the collections as well as to find out how it is managed.Situated just 15 minutes east of Pattaya, it encompasses 800 acres of land housing the gardens itself as well as nurseries that maintain the collections. With this area of plantings there have to be a system to monitor the plants. They are using the BG base Data Storage for living plants.

We were very lucky to have Mr. Anders J. Lindstrom, the curator himself to guide us through the gardens. His initial briefing gave us a glimpse into the running of the gardens, how each plant in the area is monitored through their highly developed system. There are 2000 workers in Nong Nooch but not all of them are the gardening staff. About 400 maintain the gardens and the rest are staff that work on the attractions that make the garden what it is… a tourist attraction.

Espalier with Carambola

Espalier  is usually formed in temperate countries on fruit trees such as apples and pears. I have always wondered which fruit tree can be turned into this form, until I spotted these espalier carambola or starfruit trees in the Taman Warisan Pertanian or the Agricultural Heritage Garden in Putra Jaya.

These forms can be obtained by pruning and training. Training is done by tying individual shoots onto a supporting framework of canes and wires. Pruning should be done with an angled cut.