KEBUN RASA SAYANG, BOON LAY DRIVE, SINGAPORE

2022 - present

The Kebun Rasa Sayang at Boon Lay Drive started off as a co-creation and explorative engagement with 3Pumpkins. For a month, all we did was spend time with the children from the Tak Takut Kids Club through a weekly community composting ritual.

Soon, a deeper collaboration with 3Pumpkins ensued. We began a participatory action project for the HeritageFest 2022. Together, we anchored on the notion that as Singapore transforms into a City in Nature, gardening has become part of the DNA of Singapore. In dissecting what this means to heritage and culture of the Boon Lay Drive neighbourhood we kept circling back to the question “How does the community sayang themselves and each other with the plants they grow at home”?

Slowly, the idea of building a community children garden ground-up together with residents, children from the Tak Takut Kids Club, volunteers and local businesses was formed. With the blessing of stakeholders such as NParks and Boon Lay Zone C Residents Committee, we were entrusted with an allotment garden for 2 years not just to cultivate plants, but to transmit the rich stories in the neighbourhood, a place for learning in a social setting and cultivate the values of earth care, patience, wellness, neighbourliness and kindness.

To aid the design of the allotment garden and capture the culture and heritage of gardening and caring for plants in the neighbourhood, the 3Pumpkins team conducted interviews with 15 residents in Boon Lay Drive to find out more. A range of stories came up: gardening and plants provided calm and solace, care for neighbours, offerings for prayers, herbal remedies, a way to gain comfort from loss of family members, a way to generate a second income and a way to stay active and healthy.

The permaculture design process

The project was designed to be collaborative, experimental, explorative. For impact we designed the process so that we could co-created the space with the community instead of taking on the build unilaterally as a “service provider”.

Learning happened through the process. Garden systems and elements were chosen to aid closed loop food systems, regenerate soil, cultivate biodiversity, transmit knowledge and stories of plants from the neighbourhood with a key focus on engaging children and their communities.

This is why we feel more organisations should create urban permaculture gardens. It achieves several environmental, social, cultural, educational, cultural and health outcomes:

Sustaining the space...

Through the build process knowledge was shared and garden care systems were put in place. Several workshops and training sessions helped the team understand and gain confidence in applying heaped, worm and trench composting techniques on site.

We also demonstrated the “lasagne” or “kuih lapis” (as we like to call it) soil building technique we deploy when we create the raised beds so that everyone involved in the garden space experiences creating and building their own soil.

Through our garden co-creation process, we enabled the team to map valuable organic waste created by friendly neighbourhood businesses. This formed the basis of closed loop food garden social connections. The garden now has a reliable supply of coffee waste, sugar cane bagasse, cardboard and dried leaves as and when it is required for composting or regenerative soil building.

A food garden with a greater purpose

This food garden project has led us to creating an initiative beyond growing food, sharing shared gardening heritage or eco stewardship in a community. The Kebun Rasa Sayang will now support the community kitchen at 3Pumpkins. Together, we will use the kitchen and garden as regenerative food spaces for participatory action research, youth leadership and generative outcomes in enabling better food habits, choices and health outcomes amongst children living in this area of Boon Lay. Permaculture will guide the thinking, design and engagement process on the ground. This project will contribute to larger efforts on the ground to create a healthy precinct and movements in Boon Lay. It is a project guided by the Ministry of Health Office for Health Transformation (MOHT) mission and supported by funders The Majurity Trust. This is why we create permaculture food gardens - it always goes beyond gardening!

Through our garden co-creation process, we enabled the team to map valuable organic waste created by friendly neighbourhood businesses. This formed the basis of closed loop food garden social connections. The garden now has a reliable supply of coffee waste, sugar cane bagasse, cardboard and dried leaves as and when it is required for composting or regenerative soil building.

Site plan