ive Well
TAKING URBAN FARMING
TO GREATER HEIGHTS KTPH and YCH are well known for their lush landscaping — not only on their grounds, but on rooftops, too. Beyond growing pretty plants, a team of gardening volunteers is setting its sights on turning the rooftop plots into an even more productive farm.
The gardening volunteers (in blue) together with Yishun Health CEO Prof Chua Hong Choon and COO Ms Yen Tan during a visit to the rooftop farm
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olunteers have long been the lifeblood of Yishun Health’s rooftop farms, which grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, including some jumbo-sized, award-winning pumpkins and gourds. Working on a roster, they spend several hours every week to plant, weed and tend to the vegetable beds and fruit trees. According to Simon Chan and Rosalind Tan, members of Yishun
Health’s landscaping team, there have been ambitions to ramp up the output of the gardens for a while now. And since 2019, a plucky group of eight volunteers has been taking on that challenge, moving the small vegetable farming operation into the fast lane to better prepare for the future. Venturing into hydroponics, they began to research, experiment and build their own vertical urban farming system from scratch.
FROM HOBBY GARDENERS TO HYDROPONICS FARMERS Among them are ex-Singapore Airlines colleagues, M Radhakrishnan (Krish), 69; A Jaiakumar (Jaia), 70; and Gomez Steven John (Steven), 52. While the three of them have had a lifelong passion for gardening and plants, it has been an uphill task to learn about this new form of farming. From building the tiered system | 11
