The Curious Gardener is my personal blog about my garden in tropical Singapore. You’ll find stories about my plants, my attempts at gardening as well as the creatures that visit sporadically or daily.

I’m a gardening hobbyist who enjoys pottering around in the garden. I started out the usual way – as a helper to my dad – and eventually got interested in the different ways of propagating plants. People used to give lots of cuttings and thinnings, and once I mastered growing plants from those, I eventually worked my way to growing plants from seeds; and from there, graduated to the how and why of growing things. The journey is fun; the destination somewhere up ahead…

In early 2010, I decided to focus more on growing edible plants. I’d dabbled in them a little over the years, but let’s face it – they don’t give sufficient instructions on the backs of those packets of seeds, so my attempts weren’t huge successes. However, knowing how much pesticide goes into commercially grown crops, and how prices are continually rising, I decided to make another go at it.

My intent was also partially inspired by cooking shows on TV (hello, River Cottage and Jamie Oliver! ), but more so by our older generation’s experiences of growing their own crops back when Singapore was more rural. It gives me a sense of connection to them.

Besides that, I like communing with nature, understanding how everything works so harmoniously together rather than running for the pesticide whenever I see something destroying my plants. Everything has a place and role to play, even when they’re doing something we don’t like – they’re just doing what nature intended them to do.

There’s a lot of trial and error in gardening, but there are good lessons to be learned. It’s a personally rewarding experience to me – relaxing and positive, and it helps me to stay balanced and deal with life’s ups and downs. Just watching plants grow and thrive is a terrific counterbalance to crowds, rude people and irresponsible drivers!

In this blog, I also try to include information that I didn’t find elsewhere when I started looking up the growing of certain plants – which is why you’ll see photos of my plants’ progress, e.g. from seed to fruit. Hopefully it will be useful to you. For me, it’s part of a wonderful learning journey.

In case you didn’t notice, we also have a very humble YouTube channel where we upload the movie snippets taken in the garden. It’s mostly about the birds that we see here, especially unusual visitors like migratory birds. I haven’t worked myself up to doing vlogs yet, sorry.

Starting in 2017, I’ll also be experimenting more with the concepts of permaculture. It’s something that caught my interest a few years ago but didn’t pursue until now. Why now? Because I finally decided to take the leap when I found a suitable online permaculture design course. In case you haven’t already discerned it, I like working with nature, not against it, and this is something that definitely does that. Don’t worry, the usual updates will keep coming!

If you want to stay in touch with us at The Curious Gardener, check out how you can get regular updates from us.

If you just surfed in but didn’t find exactly what you were looking for, make sure you’ve searched this site properly before you leave. We like sharing information with like-minded gardeners and hope you have a positive experience when you visit.

And please note that we use British English on this blog, so the spelling of some words may differ from what you may be used to if you use American English.

Let’s keep gardening!

The Curious Gardener
January 2017

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