Following up from my previous consultation with Fabrizio, I had to seek out information on the growing habbits of Singaporean Gardeners.
In this post, I have done up some case studies of the different growing habbits/methods of plant growers from different levels use in Singapore. Most of the information is obtained through the Plant Community Singapore Facebook page which can be accessed through https://www.facebook.com/groups/162139813824223/
General information:
I have prepared the diagram below for a brief idea on how diverse and subdivided the gardening hobby is like in Singapore.
As the world of plants is extremely broad and covers a myriad of plants with different growth habbits and features, there are plant experts who tend to different categories of plants with their own needs. These groups of plants include but are not limited to:
Cacti and Succulents
These include Aloe vera, Haworthia, Gymnocalyciums, Hylocereus, Cereus, Eurphobias, Oputunia etc.
Orchids
Hoyas
Gesneriads
These include Episcias, African Violets, Achimenses, Sinningias, Gloxinias, Kohleria etc.
Carivoruous Plants
These include VenusFlyTraps, Pitcher plants, Cobra lillies, Sundews, Butterworts etc.
Brommeliads
These include the popular airplants and Neoregalias, the ones found along the sides of the Super trees at Gardens by the Bay.
Roses and other flowers
these includes flowers like Zinnias, Marigolds, Torch Gingers, Cosmos, Clitorialis peas etc.
Edibles
Basically anything grown for the purpose of consumption
I will hence list down 3 sections of these plants and their corresponding different levels of growers and their growing conditions
Cacti and Succulents
Beginners:
These usually involve the office workers who would like some greenery in the office with minimal care. In this range, people prize neglect to grow as an attractive feature rather than nurture to grow which is what advanced growers go for.
These are usually found at most gardening plant shops around neighborhoods and night markets where they would go for as low as 3 for $10. With such an affordable price, it is no wonder these are perfect starter plants for beginners.
The above picture features the moon cactus, a popular ‘office plant’ for the beginner who would like to try growing cacti or succulents.
An easy to care and popular houseplant would be the Aloe Vera which is a succulent, a relative of the haworthia. These reproduce quickly and are extremely robust. Being an edible with multiple uses as well, the Aloe Vera is a popular choice for beginners, people at this stage prize Usage and Robustness for their plants.
Intermediate:
Intermediate plant growers such as myself are aware of the kind of plants that can be grown and their care and they will assess the situation accordingly. We would choose cacti that are robust that perform well no matter what.
Presented here is a pic on a typical Gymnocalycium, this section of cacti does well in most conditions and they flower too! What separates intermediate growers with the advanced ones is that we aren’t as adventurous to rent out spaces at nurseries and the variety of our cacti and succulents are limited too. The cacti we grow are generally affordable as well.
Advanced:
Advanced gardeners in this section mostly deal with high end (and expensive) succulents and cacti and these generally revolve around challenging plants like pseudolithos, high end haworthias and astrophyllums where the prices could reach beyond the hundreds.
What these growers do is that they would rent out nursery plots mostly around Choa Chu Kang to grow their plants and each of these plants are generally grown in modular squarish black pots with well draining media.
Gardeners at this level tend to use potting mix recipes from other growers and then reinvent their own proportions to suit their micro environment.
The growers will go the extra mile by labelling and categorizing their plants accordingly.
Orchids
Beginner:
Beginner growers usually get their plants from the neighborhood pasar malam (night market) and place them at their houses. These plants are usually mass produced, robust and easy to flower in our climate. The varieties however are normally limited and not as extensive.
The easier orchids for beginners would normally consist of phalaenopsis-dendrobiums, phalaenopsis, golden shower oncidiums
These plants are expendable, easy to replace due to the low cost and serves as a ‘guinea pig’ plant for beginners who would like to pursue an interest in orchids.
Intermediate:
Intermediate orchid growers would have mastered some aspects of the cheaper plants from the market and they would crave for more orchids with additional interesting features like white hair on Dendrobium Senile (left) and the fragrance from Encyclia Cordigera (right). With that comes a totally different direction for care when it comes to the orchids. Growers at this stage will get to understand more on how potting media works and the relevant materials to be used aside from the usual charcoal, such as wood chunks for mounting, coir fibre, lecca, pumice, fern bark.
Attention to these orchids would move from plainly its ornamental purpose to incorporate the sense of touch and smell, these growers would start to realize that these features are just as important as its visuals.
These growers break through the habbit of shopping only at wet markets to go to the orchid nurseries in Singapore to browse their selections themselves. It is at these places where they would get a deeper understanding and awareness of all the different orchids in the market.
The plants in the intermediate level would be Cattleyas, Encycliass, Laelias, deciduous Dendrobiums
Advanced:
Advanced growers would go the extra mile by thinking beyond their current environment on the kind of orchids they could grow. I’ve seen friends of mine who would use fridges or makeshift growing units for cool-flowering orchids and to great success.
In addition, a key feature of advanced gardeners is that they would order orchids from countries such as Thailand or Taiwan to grow and sell them off in Singapore.
In regards to the types of orchids, they would move off from orchids that only thrive in our climate to orchids that only thrive at extreme conditions like coldness, dryness or intense sunlight. They would tweak their environments accordingly to suit the growth needs of these plants using ingenuous means.
Advanced orchids include Paphiopedilums, Cymbidiums, Fukurans( Neofenetia Falcalta), Lycaste etc
Carnivorous Plants
Beginner:
People starting off first hand with CPs (Carnivorous Plants) would usually go for Nepenthes Mirablis plants which are mass produced, easily affordable and sold at the markets around the neighborhoods. These plants are easy to grow and are expendable. People in this range would normally hang them around their house and follow the care methods based on the instructions of the seller.
Nepenthes, also known as pitcher plants are a very good example of easy beginner plants for people interested to grow CPs as their growth habits tie in nicely with Singapore’s climate and furthermore, they do not require fertilizing otherwise it would be in a vegetative growth state with minimal pitchers forming.
Intermediate:
Intermediate gardeners would be beginners whom have mastered the art of taking care of the usual pitcher plants and are determined to try out more challenging ones which has additional attractive features like Nepenthes Ampullaria shown in the picture above which evolved from cacting insects to capturing leaf litter (which makes it a herbivore). These plants are more challenging to grow and that they require a totally different potting mix as compared to other nepenthes which are easier to grow.
Similar to orchids growers, intermediate gardeners differentiate themselves from the advanced ones in the way they keep to their provided micro environments such as HDB corridors or backyards to grow their plants.
Advanced:
Advanced growers not only try to improve their growing conditions by altering the humidity, sunlight and what not, they move on to the habbit of ordering their plants from overseas, inventing their own potting mix and intensive labelling with great emphasis on nomenclature.
In addition, growers move on to photograph their own plants as they see them to be something worth capturing.
Aside from pitcher plants, advanced growers challenge themselves with more difficult CPs which include the venus fly trap, which requires a very specific system of care with hard water, full sunlight and constant moisture. There are other CPs like sundews and butterworts that require the same degree of difficulty in their needs.
Similar to the growers for cacti and succulents, spaces are rented out by determined growers to grow their plants which would be sold or exchanged with other growers for more interesting plants for their collection.
I share a gardening plot with 2 advanced CP growers who would orientate their larger plants in the garden to provide natural humidity to their CPs within the space. In addition, they have invented interesting means to grow them such as growing them in semi terrariums in bubble tea cups or grow them over a small tuft of moss that not only encapsulates the moisture but provide a beautiful background to showcase their sundews.
The above 3 images are taken from my friend’s instagram and it shows how advanced growers tend to look at ways to better present their plants rather than focusing solely on how to keep them alive. There are aspects like growing on mosses, using other foliage plants to induce humidity (as opposed to a terrarium) and a labeling system that makes things orderly.
Observations
After researching on the various levels of these sections of plants, I have derived the following similarities.
Beginner:
More on plants that are expendable, thrive on neglect, more for the visuals, easy to care for. These plants are more suited for House conditions, mostly around the HDB corridor.
Intermediate:
These people have a good sense on the growing conditions of the respective plants are they are seeking out something more like fragrance or texture. This is the stage where gardeners are starting to be more creative in the way they think about the various materials they have at their disposal to recreate different potting mixes that suits their micro environment.
Advanced:
Advanced growers look beyond simply keeping the plants alive to presentation which includes aspects like:
- surrounding backdrop plants like mosses
- organization through pots that minimize space taken up
- labeling system as nomenclature is important to gardeners (moving from the gardener to the collector)
- importing plants from overseas
- coming up with a business of selling plants no matter how small
- the joy of sharing their tips with beginner plant growers
More information to come!