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  The Straits Times 17 Dec 06
Dec 17, 2006 'Olympics of orchids' coming here in 2011
Meeting expected to be attended by more than 300,000 experts and enthusiasts
By Nur Dianah Suhaimi

Business Times 16 Dec 06
Evolving from garden city to a city in a garden
The vision is for an urban infrastructure within a tropical garden
By Vincent Wee

Channel NewsAsia 16 Dec 06
Singapore Garden Festival to be biennial affair
By Hasnita A Majid

Channel NewsAsia 15 Dec 06
Thousands of plants and flowers on display at Singapore's first Garden Festival
By Wong Mun Wai

Channel NewsAsia 10 Dec 06
Suntec City gears up for inaugural Singapore Garden Festival
By Julia Ng

SINGAPORE : Two entire floors in Suntec City Convention Centre are being transformed into a horticultural wonderland in preparations for the inaugural Singapore Garden Festival.

Garden designers and workers have just five days to dress up the fourth and sixth floors of Suntec City for the first international garden and flower show. Some 150,000 plants and 60,000 stalks of cut flowers will fill 2.3 hectares of exhibition space for the festival which kicks off on December 16.

For the first time, international award-winning landscape and garden designers - including gold medallists from the Chelsea, Philadelphia and Melbourne flower shows - will gather under one roof. Together with horticultural talents from Singapore, they will create floral windows, landscape or fantasy gardens to vie for top honours. The public can also feast their eyes on top designer creations, and get close to rare and exotic plants like desert flora.

Dr Wong Wei-Har, Deputy Director of Singapore Botanic Gardens, National Parks Board, said: "On the fourth floor, you will see the orchid show. This will also be a haven for a market place because we have over 100 retail stores.

"We also have community gardens, best home gardens, sky-rise gardens and on top of that everyday we have what we call the festival stage where we have programmes, talks, demonstrations for the public. So it will be a very enjoyable experience for the entire family."

There will also be a series of programmes including talks and demonstrations, and even a daily Plant Clinic where visitors can consult experts from the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority. - CNA/de

Channel NewsAsia 15 Dec 06
Thousands of plants and flowers on display at Singapore's first Garden Festival
By Wong Mun Wai

SINGAPORE: The inaugural Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) has opened with international competitions and the display of thousands of plants and flowers.

The 10-day festival helps cultivate local talent as well as work on Singapore's goal of making the country a city in a garden. The SGF occupies 2.3 hectares at Suntec International Convention & Exhibition Centre.

The show includes plants and floral displays that have been especially created by designers from 14 countries. Also showcased are exhibits from earlier competitions like landscape design, and a revamp of the Singapore Orchid Show. The layout of the Orchid Show mirrors an orchid blossom with six petals or zones. At the centre are the prized orchids on display for the public to see. In all, the whole SGF took two years to organise and has more than 150,000 plants on display.

In putting the show together, the organisers have got local companies to work with foreign counterparts in designing and constructing many of the displays, resulting in positive benefits.

Ng Lang, Chief Executive Officer of National Parks Board, said: "What we have done for this show, for example, is team up the overseas award-winning designers with the local contractors. So, in a process of working together, we are already seeing a transfer of knowledge from world-class designers to our local industry."

One of the highlights of the SGF is the People's Choice Award which invites the public to vote for their favourite garden displays through SMS.

Among the displays is one by Peter Cheok - an artistic appeal to Singaporeans to look after the environment. Mr Cheok said: "We thought it is very good to showcase how we image a world destroyed by pollution, by environment, so-called destruction of man, what it will look like."

The winners in the various categories of competition were announced in the evening. They are: Landscape Gardens Gold Award & Best of Show: The Philosopher's Seat by Henry Steed Gold Award: Garden Impressions by Jamie Durie Gold Award: One Country by Jim Fogarty Fantasy Gardens Gold Award & Best of Show: Blowin' in the Wind by Far East Flora Gold Award: Convict’s Fantasy by Carolyn & Joby Blackman from Vivid Design Floral Windows to the World Gold Award & Best of Show: Images of Orchids Large and Small by Gregor Lersch Gold Award: Beauty of Emptiness by Jin Young Park The Royal Horticultural Society Award went to Australian Jim Fogarty, while Singapore orchid grower and exporter, Woon Leng Nursery, won The Orchid Society of Southeast Asia Championship Cup.

President SR Nathan gave out the awards. He said: "As we open the Singapore Garden Festival, we are also marking a new phase in our development as a Garden City. Going forward, we will transform Singapore into a 'City in a Garden', where the whole country is one beautiful tropical garden within which our urban infrastructure is nestled.

"To evolve Singapore into a 'City in a Garden', we need to inculcate in our people an appreciation for greenery and mobilise wider public support and participation.

"The Singapore Garden Festival will celebrate gardening and horticulture excellence. The Festival is also Singapore's contribution to the universe of gardening and flower shows."

The garden festival opens to the public from Saturday. - CNA/ir

Business Times 16 Dec 06
Evolving from garden city to a city in a garden
The vision is for an urban infrastructure within a tropical garden
By Vincent Wee

SINGAPORE'S development as a city will see it evolving from a garden city into a city in a garden, said President SR Nathan at the Singapore Garden Festival Awards ceremony at Suntec International Convention Centre last night.

The vision for the future sees the whole country as one tropical garden within which urban infrastructure is nestled. Greenery will be a distinctive feature of the environment being created for people to live, work and play in, he added.

Cultivating an appreciation for greenery, mobilising wider support and public participation is key to this process.

The Singapore Garden Festival plays an important role in this vision through its celebration of gardening and horticulture excellence. The inaugural show will feature international award-winning designers from world-renowned shows such as the Chelsea Flower Show (United Kingdom), the Philadelphia Flower Show, Floriade (Netherlands) and the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show which will specially create 14 floral displays for Singapore.

The festival takes up 2.3 hectares at Suntec and runs from today till Dec 25. It is expected to draw 200,000 local and international visitors.

The 10-day event will feature more than 30 garden and floral displays, including 19 show gardens and the feature displays showcasing the world's top talents in garden and floral design. Over 150,000 tropical and temperate plants are used for the displays, including blooms never before seen in Singapore.

Among the highlights of the festival are the Best of Show Gardens, comprising 10 Landscape Gardens and and nine Fantasy Gardens; the Floral Windows of the World featuring colourful and vibrant cut flower displays; and the annual Singapore Orchid Show which is now incorporated into the festival.

There will also be a garden marketplace with over 100 specialty stalls offering horticultural and gardening-related products and services.

Ahead of the festival opening, NParks CEO Ng Lang said: 'The Singapore Garden Festival promises to be a truly unique experience in many ways. No other garden or flower show in the world has as wide a geographical representation of top talent within a single event. Our all-star cast of international gardening luminaries will provide the finest displays of horticultural excellence and inspiration from around the world.'

NParks hopes the show will boost Singapore's international standing as a centre of horticultural excellence as well as make the joys and rewards of gardening accessible to everyone, Mr Ng added.

President Nathan presented the Best of Show awards for the best displays in Landscape Gardens, Fantasy Gardens and Floral Windows to the World last night.

The Singapore Garden Festival is a biennial event and will eventually find its permanent home at the new Gardens by the Bay in 2010.

Channel NewsAsia 16 Dec 06
Singapore Garden Festival to be biennial affair
By Hasnita A Majid

SINGAPORE: The Singapore Garden Festival is set to be a staple here and a world-class one. It will be a biennial affair and one with an international standing along the lines of the world-class Chelsea Flower Show in Britain.

This announcement was made just as Singapore found out it has won the bid to host a prestigious international conference on orchids in 2011.

The inaugural Singapore Garden Festival kicked off on Friday at Suntec City with thousands of plants and flowers on display. Visiting the festival on Saturday, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said: "The Garden Festival is something that we conceived. We wanted to develop a world-class flower show in Singapore. The fact that we are so well-known in the world as a garden city but we don't have a truly world-class garden show, something was missing. So about two years ago, I asked NParks to develop this show and also eventually to make this a permanent feature of our Gardens by the Bay."

Mr Mah also said that although the inaugural festival is modest, it has received good reviews from international participants.

As for the annual Singapore Orchid Show, the Republic is set for bigger things, having won the bid for the 20th International Orchid Conference in 2011. The event should reinforce Singapore's position as a centre for horticultural excellence and help grow the industry.

Mr Mah said: "This is a very, very prestigious event in the orchid industry, in the orchid world. It's equivalent to hosting the Olympics.

"What does it mean for Singapore? Well, first of all, it means that it will be a tremendous boost to the industry in Singapore. This is a meeting of all the world experts in the orchid industry, it's an academic conference, a scientific conference as well as a meeting, a show where the different disciplines come together.

"It will be the horticulturalists, the botanists, as well as people who are in the orchid business. So having all these people come together will be a tremendous boost to the local industry and of course for Singapore's reputation as a centre of excellence for the orchid industry."

John Elliot, president of Orchid Society of South East Asia, said: "It is a major event so the significance of it is that it should give a boost to orchid interests, to the orchid industry and I think it will stimulate a lot of public awareness that there's more to orchids than just cut flowers and the things that you see everyday."

Singapore is the first country to be chosen twice for the event. The last time it hosted the same conference was in 1963. Singapore is already a major player in the global orchid industry, exporting over $20 million worth of orchids to over 33 destinations including Japan, Australia, Greece, the US and Netherlands, as well as supplying about 15% of the market share of cut orchids.

Homegrown talent Stephanie Sun also had an orchid named after her - the first Singaporean celebrity to have that honour. International celebrities who have had orchids named after them include Bae Yong Jun and Amitabh Bachan.

Stephanie Sun said: "I thought that it's such a special thing to have a flower named after you. There were discussions on which flower, what colour I would like and they actually sent me a few samples.....I finally chose one and then they informed me that one of the hybrids actually belonged to the one in memory of Princess Diana."

The Singapore Orchid Show also saw the best growers of orchids being awarded for their efforts. For orchid lovers, the exhibition is indeed a dream come true as they get to see orchids in various shapes and sizes, some of which are hybrids from all over the world. - CNA/ir

The Straits Times 17 Dec 06
Dec 17, 2006 'Olympics of orchids' coming here in 2011
Meeting expected to be attended by more than 300,000 experts and enthusiasts
By Nur Dianah Suhaimi

SINGAPORE'S $20 million orchid industry looks set to bloom with an announcement yesterday that the 'Olympics of orchids' will be held here in 2011. The World Orchid Conference will bring together experts and enthusiasts from around the world. More than 300,000 people are expected to attend the meeting, during which a competition showcasing orchids from all over the globe will be held.

The news was confirmed yesterday by the president of the World Orchid Conference Trust, Mr Peter Furniss, at the Singapore Orchid Show. Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan, who officiated at the show's opening at the Suntec Convention Centre, said that the conference will be a blessing for the industry here.

Said Mr Mah: 'This is a meeting of all the world experts in the orchid industry. Having them come together is going to be a tremendous boost to the whole industry and to Singapore's reputation as a centre of excellence for the orchid industry.'

Singapore is the world's second-largest exporter of orchids, with 15 per cent of the market share. Thailand accounts for the other 85 per cent. Singapore's bid to host the conference was made by a delegation from the National Parks Board (NParks) and the Orchid Society of South-east Asia (OSSEA) at last year's conference, which was held in France. Singapore beat South Africa and Taiwan to win the right to hold the meeting, which is held every three years.

This will be Singapore's second time playing host - the meeting was held here in 1963, too. Only the United States has been selected more than once as a venue for the conference since its inception in 1954. O

SSEA president John Elliott said that one of Singapore's strengths, highlighted in its bid, is its proven track record in organising major events and conferences. Said Dr Elliott: 'We stressed to the exhibitors that the event will be done in partnership with the Government. This is a very big concern for the exhibitors who want to avoid any difficulty getting their orchids in and out of the country.'

Some orchid growers are already getting ready for the big event. Ms Shirley Too, manager of grower and exporter The Orchids People, said: 'We will try to develop new hybrids in time for the competition.'
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