Bucky Group - Herbal Garden Tour

I love Bucky Group outings and this is one of the best so far. This week, we visited Mr Tan's Herbal Garden by Block 938, Jurong West Street 91.

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It looks like any ubiquitous HDB (public housing) cluster of apartment blocks in Singapore - neat, dense and colorful with activities on the front green.

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Sandwiched between two apartment block is Mr Tan's tiny plot of herbal garden, remarkable in land scarce and straitjacket Singapore. This herbal garden is a project of the Resident Committee (RC). I heard that there are other such gardens in Singapore, also similarly projects of RCs.

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The one standing with the blue shirt is Mr Tan. He is here busy explaining to the Bucky Group the virtues of various plants and how we can use them to heal rheumatism, cardio-vascular problems and even cancer. He has asked me not to blog about specific herbs and their usages, as he does not want people following them blindly to get sick and getting him into trouble. If you want any specific advice, you can go to the garden itself to meet him. All herbs are free for your collection.

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Here, we were under the shed, just like in a kampung (village) amid high rise urban dwellings. The green canopy are passion fruit vines.

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The garden is grown in permaculture style - the crops mixed randomly. This way, the soil nutrients get naturally recycled and the menace of pests minimised. Pests get confused when they smell varied kinds of crops coming from different directions and eventually die out.

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Many of the herbs are common plants, many looking like weeds. In fact, some of them are commonly considered as weeds! Perhaps we haven't been giving enough respect to 'weeds'! More appropriately, I would now consider a 'weed' as a plant whose virtues are yet to be discovered. You may like to say the same of human beings in the same demeanor or predicament. :)

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Can you spot any plant you know? Among the common ones, you can see papaya, guava and 'wild yam'.

The Herbal Garden is tilled entirely by volunteers. This must be uniquely Singaporean, having a tiny plot in the midst of urban dwelling, tended by volunteers and the crops given away for free! What is more surprising is that generally hardly anything else in this crass materialistic country comes free!

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One of the Bucky Group member told me after visiting the garden that he now feels there is still some hope for Singapore. I guess he meant hope of having caring and compassionate people around. I think there is always hope. Even the cut-and-thrusts of a staunch market economy such as ours, has its precessionary effects.

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Bees go around sucking nectar out of flowers, but in the process they pollinate plants. This is a 'precessionary effect'.

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Bucky said that no matter what, we are at least in a sub-conscious evolution and that the intention should be to move from that to a conscious evolution of the human consciousness. The latter being faster to save humankind from degradation.

These fruits are called "mountain grapes" in Chinese. This is one herb that the consumer must consume with correct advice and caution as it may not be suitable for some, like pregnant ladies.

I don't know the name of this plant. It must have a scientific Latin name. In fact, all the herbs in this garden have scientific names and therefore are nothing new. What is new to the layman are their usage as medicinal herbs. This blue flower in the pix, by the way, is less than 1 cm in diameter.

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It's beautiful isn't it, what nature brings? Those fine filaments are less than a millimetre thick.

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This tiny leaf tastes sweet when you chew on it and even leaves a sweet after taste.

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Some of the herbs are dried out before consumption.

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Hereon, the pixs are eye candy for this post. I do not know their names and their uses. Even if I do know their usage I still would not leave any advice here. However, if you know the common names or the scientific names of the plants, please leave a comment below.

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Before we left the garden, one of the volunteers came with a plant uprooted from another sister garden in another estate, to be planted in Mr Tan's garden. For this plant it is the roots that are medicinal.

We are now finished with this garden and are heading for the garden at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) nearby.

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If you are coming to Mr Tan's garden and don't know the way, just navigate from this church. Home for the sexy singing pastor Ho Yeow Sun aka "China Wine" - Jurong West's other famous product! :)

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This is the start of the NTU garden.

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Beside it is a map with the various crops labeled in Chinese.

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Though within the perimeters of a public tertiary institution, the volunteers here are very traditionally Chinese in their practice. Their first ritual is to pray to the Toa Pei Kong deity before they start work. Kind of a respect to the land.

It is a scenic lovely plot of land on a hillock.

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You can see the Bucky Groupies engulfed by the serenity of the countryside.

Here, unlike Mr Tan's plot, the crops are neatly planted in their own beds. This is so that they can easily be identified and harvested for systematic clinical studies by the university academic staff.

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It is indeed a lovely Saturday morning. Time well spent. The knowledge gained was overwhelming. It is enlightening to know that illnesses can simply be healed through traditional herbs without surgery and the chemical side effects of drugs. Western developed countries are learning a lot about these herbs and are now making capsules out of them. It'll take a long time for me to learn more about these plants. Some of the Bucky Group members come here more frequently and understands more. Some got their ailments healed taking the herbs. I was told that one of the volunteers here had a brain tumour and got healed taking these herbs. He was there tilling the earth when we arrived.

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What is most amazing is the dedication of the volunteers and their big heart of giving away everything free. I feel honoured just being associated with these kind souls.

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For more of the Bucky Group, click here.