Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the Singapore Garden Festival Awards Ceremony
Jul 22, 2016
I am very happy to join you tonight for the Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) Awards Ceremony. A warm welcome to all our guests from abroad. Welcome to Singapore and Gardens by the Bay.
We started the Festival in 2006 to celebrate our passion for greening with Singaporeans and the rest of the world. It was our first garden show involving award-winning designers from all over the world. It was a way for us to learn from the best and also share our experience with others.
10 years has passed since our first show. This year is our sixth edition and we have come a long way. At the first SGF, we had about 30 designers. This year, we have close to 50 designers. The numbers have increased. And the SGF is now one of the top garden shows in the region. It’s an event many local and international designers want to be part of.
I am very proud that this year we have the highest number of international designers joining us. You can see the quality in the vibrant and imaginative designs. For example, we have a Japanese garden, the landscapes of south-eastern France and even the house of a Polynesian demi-god. It is not just a showcase of different cultures, but also interactions across cultures. For example, designers from the UK and the USA have incorporated our local plants and trees, like the orchid and the rain tree, into their displays.
SGF has also provided a boost to our local landscape industry. Through the Festival, the standards of our landscape industry have risen. Many of our local designers levelled up their skills and gained valuable experience by participating in the Festival. One example is Mr Alan Tan. Mr Tan was a horticulturalist and landscape designer with NParks for over 20 years and was involved in SGF since the first show in 2006. We are very proud that he has since ventured out and set up his own creative studio in Singapore last year. He has even expanded regionally and is doing consultancy projects in Cambodia and Vietnam. Well done Alan!
We want to continue to nurture Singaporean landscape designers through the Festival. This is why we have made the competition more open and accessible for our local designers this year. One new participant this year is Mr Bernard Soh. He has 25 years of experience as a floral designer. Over the years, he continued to upgrade himself and improve his skills, for example, through a WSQ diploma and international accreditation as a Certified Floral Designer. I wish you all the best and I certainly hope the experience at the Festival this year will inspire him even further.
This evening we are giving out 42 awards – 11 bronze, 12 silver, 11 gold and 8 best of show awards. I do not know who the winners are, but I know the judges had a hard time doing the selection, due to the high quality of entries. But to all our award winners, congratulations and well done!
The SGF is not just a show for professionals. In Singapore, we believe everyone has a role to play in creating our City in a Garden.
I am very happy that more and more people from the community are participating in the Festival. This year, volunteers, students and hobbyists have worked hard to put up hundreds of terrariums for the World of Terrariums display. And some 60 community gardening groups have also been busy preparing show gardens for the Gardeners’ Cup competition. They may not have formal training as landscape designers, but they have put up high-quality displays. I encourage more to participate in future. Perhaps some may even be inspired to pursue a professional career in the landscaping industry!
Tomorrow, we officially open the SGF to the public. It will be our Show of the Decade - the biggest in size and content. We already have the largest number of designers participating this year. I look forward to welcoming all our visitors over the 9 days of the Festival.
Ultimately, the SGF is not just an event but part of a national greening movement. It is a movement tied to the vision of a Garden City set out by our Founding PM Lee Kuan Yew. Since then, we have become more than a Garden City; we are a City in a Garden. I hope that this movement will continue to grow from the ground-up, so that Singapore can be a greener and better home.
Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has worked hard for the Festival. Over 1,000 staff, volunteers, students and members of community groups have helped curate the show. The contributions of our sponsors have also helped us bring over 13,000 beneficiaries from various charities to the Festival. I would also like to thank all the participants and members of the landscape industry here tonight.
I wish you all a wonderful Festival and hope you enjoy the rest of the evening.