Mont’Kiara Palma - A Garden For Sharing

In the early days of introducing the condominium as a form of housing, the developers had to promote the lifestyle to residence who were accustomed to having at least a small patch of land for their garden space. High rise apartments or flats were then associated with low cost council flats that do not have any greenery. However the pioneers in condominium buildings, the early developers that started to introduce condominium living to the higher income group showed that not only amenities can be shared but the gardens also can be shared especially when adequate space is allocated.

One such development was done by Sunrise, a developer of housing in the Bukit Kiara area. We visited the gardens of the Mont’Kiara Palma Condominium to see how the gardens were planned and maintained. The condominiums were built in the 80’s and now there are numerous other high rise buildings being built in the surrounding area.

The Science of Naming Plants

Not unlike people, plants also have names. You may be familiar with many common plant names but usage of common names can bring about some confusion. There are thousands of plants and most of these have no common names, many that have common names have numerous names and many may share the same name. This is mostly due to locality, culture or tradition. Every single plant on the planet is known by one correct scientific name that is known throughout the world. Linnaeus, a famous botanist, developed the current scientific system of naming plants. This system was then incorporated into the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature in 1867.

Managing lilies in the lowlands of the tropics

We featured lilies in our volume 16 and it was a learning curve for us in our garden to try and manage the lilies that we normally purchased in pots during festive seasons. Most of them came from the highlands and some were imported from Holland. We have already been planting the ubiquitous spider lilies, the Crinum asiaticum and the Zephyranthes. These lilies are easy to manage and there are not many pests that we need to be on the lookout for.

A Walk Through Putrajaya - A Garden City

Putrajaya is well known for being the new Federal Government Administrative Capital of Malaysia, taking over from Kuala Lumpur. This development, the largest integrated urban development project in the history of Malaysia was undertaken by Perbadanan Putrajaya when the master plan of the city was approved in 1993. The brainchild of our former Prime Minister, Dato’ Seri Dr Mahathir Mohammed, the city was named after the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, Almarhum Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj. The site chosen, Perang Besar is in Selangor and is 25 km south of Kuala Lumpur. The site was chosen because of several factors and one of them being the existence of interesting natural vegetation and land form that can be incorporated into city planning and development.

The concept of a City in a Garden means the presence of many parks and gardens as the master plan calls for “The Making of a Greener Living in Putrajaya”. It is home to various public gardens, including the Botanical gardens, the Agro Heritage gardens, and the Wetlands. We have featured these gardens in our past issues. However, Putrajaya has many more gardens, with different themes and in some cases functions.