Every garden has a story – what’s yours?

I have started a garden from scratch three times.

My first wasn’t really a garden. It was a collection of pots crammed into our ninth-floor, 1,900 sq ft apartment – by the time we moved out in 1990, nearly 100 pots occupied every available corner.

With no actual yard, I learnt to garden within my limits. Weekends were spent playing a game of horticultural musical chairs – rotating pots out to the balcony for sun, rain and pruning before swopping in the next batch. Some plants survived. Others sulked. Quite a few died.

But I was hopelessly hooked.

Then came a landed home in 1990 and, with it, something I had never had before: real earth. I could get down and dirty and sink my hands into it.

Over 36 years, it evolved into what many people came to know as Min’s Garden. It was a therapeutic escape from the stresses of daily life, from raising two young daughters to working in a fast-paced job with constant deadline pressures.

Min’s Garden was shaped by sunlight and rain, but also by trial and error, happy accidents, plant exchanges with friends, and the quiet rhythms of family life.

Understanding the unique needs of different plants was a complex dance – a learning curve marked by wilting leaves, overwatering mishaps and disheartening casualties.

Each trial became a lesson, and each setback an opportunity to refine my skills.

Amid the challenges, the joy was immeasurable. Witnessing the first sprout unfurl delicate leaves towards the sun was pure magic. So was seeing my Tiger Orchid (Grammatophyllum speciosum) bloom after almost 20 years of waiting – and only after I moved it to a brighter spot.

There was satisfaction, too, in harvesting starfruit, belimbing and jambu ayer, and watching Min’s Garden become a haven for local wildlife: butterflies, bees, birds, monitor lizards and the occasional snake.

Through local communities and shared knowledge, gardening brought camaraderie and a deep sense of belonging.

Gardening taught me one of its most useful lessons: You never really finish a garden.

The garden was me

Then came a lesson I had never expected. In 2025, we sold our home – and with it, the garden I had tended for more than three decades.

When I broke the bittersweet news to friends that we would be letting go of Min’s Garden and moving to a condominium, one of them said something that struck me with the force of an undeniable truth: “This garden is you, and you are the garden.”

I don’t think she meant it as poetry. Min’s Garden had been part of my life for so long that it was difficult to know where the garden ended and I began.

Through celebrations and sadness, long days and late nights, it was always there. When I was overwhelmed, I dug. When I was happy, I pruned and replanted. When life felt uncertain, I watered and waited. The garden never hurried.

In return, I gave it countless hours, a fair number of backaches, perpetually dirt-caked fingernails – and a large part of my heart.

I drove past our old home several times afterwards. Where once there had been layers of green, trees, paths and plants collected over decades, there was now a flattened piece of land.

All that remained was a solitary pillar at what had been the entrance to our home – the pillar where the Min’s Garden sign had greeted so many visitors over the years. It was startling to see how something that had taken nearly 36 years to grow could disappear at such an astonishing speed.

But gardens teach us about change all the time. Plants grow, flower and die. Trees fall. Seeds germinate where you never planted them. Nature does not stand still. Neither, I discovered, does a gardener.

Beginning again

Starting over has been humbling – and unexpectedly exhilarating. It has made me look at gardening afresh.

How much garden do we really need to experience the joy of gardening? Can a balcony become a garden? What can you grow with only a few hours of sun? How do you make a tiny space feel lush without cramming it with plants? Can someone who has never grown anything successfully create a garden from scratch?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: What makes a garden a garden? Is it size? The number of plants? Beautiful landscaping?

I don’t think so.

A garden can occupy several thousand square feet or a metre-wide balcony. It can be meticulously designed or gloriously unruly. It might contain rare orchids worth hundreds of dollars or plants propagated for nothing from cuttings passed between friends.

What matters is the relationship we develop with that patch of green – and that is what I hope we can explore together in my new monthly column Mad About Gardening, which kicks off in October.

A gardening page about more than gardening

There will still be plenty of practical gardening. We want to know why that supposedly “easy” plant keeps dying. What will survive the scorching afternoon sun on a west-facing balcony? What grows in deep shade? How do you garden when you travel frequently? What plants can withstand the winds 30 storeys up?

But we’d also like to venture beyond the usual questions of fertiliser, pests and potting mix.

We want to meet the people behind Singapore’s gardens.

I’d love to read about the gardener who has transformed a tiny HDB balcony into a jungle, and the person who has spent 40 years creating a magnificent landed garden.

Show us your orchid collection, your edible garden, your rooftop retreat or the three pots outside your kitchen window that started your gardening obsession.

We’d like to meet younger gardeners as well as people who have gardened for a lifetime.

And I am particularly interested in gardens created against the odds – too little space, too much sun, almost no sun, ferocious winds, a tiny budget or an initially sceptical spouse.

Because beautiful gardens don’t necessarily begin with ideal conditions. They begin with gardeners.

We’d also like this page to become something of a gardening laboratory.

Can we create a beautiful balcony garden for $200? Can someone who claims to have “black fingers” keep five plants alive for six months? Can supermarket ginger, chilli or tomatoes provide a worthwhile harvest? Can we create a garden almost entirely from cuttings and plants exchanged with other gardeners?

Gardeners don’t only learn from successes. Some of my most useful lessons have come from plants I killed, positions I chose badly and ideas that looked wonderful in my head but considerably less wonderful once planted. Let’s talk about those failures too.

Your turn

Most importantly, I don’t want this to be a page where we do all the talking.

Tell us what you want to know.

What is the gardening problem that has defeated you? What have you always wanted to grow but never dared to try? If you had only 3 sq m, what would you plant?

What is the biggest gardening mistake you have made? What is the best gardening trick nobody ever taught you? Is there an old-fashioned plant your mother or grandmother grew that you can no longer find?

Have you discovered an ingenious way of gardening in a tiny space? Do you know someone whose garden we simply must see?

Perhaps your neighbour has created something extraordinary along an HDB corridor. Perhaps your father has tended the same garden for 40 years. Perhaps someone you know has a collection of plants so unusual that visitors cannot believe their eyes.

Or perhaps you have the garden we should visit.

Send us a photograph and tell us its story. And don’t worry if it isn’t immaculate. We aren’t searching only for Singapore’s most beautiful gardens. We’re also looking for its most interesting gardeners.

We want the experiments, the disasters, the ingenious solutions and the slightly crazy ideas.

We want your questions too – including the ones you think are too basic to ask.

Because if there’s one thing several decades of gardening have taught me, it is this: Every gardener starts somewhere. Every gardener kills plants. And every garden has something to teach us.

So let’s grow this page together. Who knows what we might unearth?