By Ethan Tait
Every time you go from the INS Pod to the Arts Pod or vice versa, you see the garden. Even though it’s advertised as “an area to sit and chat with friends”, “work in groups or individually”, or “meditate and enjoy the plants and biodiversity that surrounds you”, most of the time, you barely see any students. Why? We’ll dive into why not many students use the community garden.
The Origins of the Community Garden
The community rooftop garden was originally an empty concrete roof, with a few plants contrasting against the brutalist architecture. Then, during the 2021 Grade 8 Interdisciplinary Unit (IDU) between INS and Design, the teachers from the collaborating subjects realised that they could turn the school’s roof into a lively and sustainable community garden in an effort to promote environmentalism. Normally, they would give out a theoretical real-world problem on sustainability for the IDU task. However, this time they turned IDU into a competition on who could design the best community garden with real-world considerations such as budget, and sustainability. Students would work in threes to submit a model/drawing of their proposed idea. Once the best one from each class was chosen, the teachers put in a final vote. The winner ended up being a group of students from class 8B.
Images: The Winning Model (left) and a diagram of a proposed ‘Mushroom Tower’ (right).
The winning model is certainly more fantastical in style than the community garden we have today. As seen in the image above, the model featured more plants, compared to the final community garden. There are also giant ‘Mushroom Towers’ where one can place pots to add to the verdant surroundings. Then of course there are the standard benches for enjoying the scenery and doing school work. After the competition, the school sent the winning design to various gardening/horticultural companies to build their garden. Once the final design was formulated, construction began with the help of Corridor Farmers (an urban gardening company) and the established ‘Community Gardeners’.
The Community Gardeners are a group set up by an INS teacher, Mr. Tanish, consisting of students from grades 7-12. They are those who tend to the Community Garden, whatever it needs. According to Ms. Craats, a member of staff affiliated with the Community Gardeners, the project is collaborative, between teachers, the Corridor Farmers, and students. Over time, they added more features to the Community Garden, such as five umbrella seats, a shelter with furniture, edible plants, greenhouses, and a soil trough. Despite all this care dedicated to cultivating the garden, the greatest extent to which most students will enjoy it is merely as a means to go from the INS to the Arts pod. So why is that?
The Flaws of the Community Garden
There are a number of hypothesised reasons why the community garden is barely used. Firstly, a big issue is Singapore’s weather, half of the time it’s raining, and half of the time it’s hot. As a result, the outdoor garden is an uncomfortable spot to hang out or do school work. This is despite the umbrella tables, which only slightly increased the usage of the Community Garden. Additionally, it is pitted against other venues such as the Gymnasium, the Bus Bay, the Roof Court, the Library, and Pods and Classrooms in a SMART location competition. Most of the places students are allowed to visit all have one thing in common: they have air-conditioning. So while you’re playing volleyball or working on that assignment you really need to finish, you can do so from the comfort of an air-conditioned room.
After COVID-19 and the Circuit Breaker, where students got used to air-conditioning, this makes a difference. Also, unless they are specifically interested in learning about plants, most students would find the garden’s theme boring. Finally, according to Julienne B., a regular user of the community garden, “People mostly see the garden as a nice place in the school, rather than a community space”. Hence, the Community Garden is barely used.
Final Thoughts
Although the Community Garden is a collaborative project by different groups, the efforts made are pushed aside by the sea of students who commute through it to go to the Arts Pod/INS Pod.
There are a number of reasons why it isn’t used much, such as the weather, alternative places with air-conditioning, and students simply not being interested in learning about plants. It is overall viewed of it as more of a “decoration” than a community area.
My suggestion for the Community Gardeners is to add a vase filled with water and fish to make it more zen-like. However, this has its own set of associated technicalities, so I understand if it is not implemented. Overall, it has been a project with great ambitions and expectations of students using it, that turned into a “decoration” in the school.
Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement for the Community Garden, it is an analysis. Those who are in the Community Gardeners, please don’t take offence to this article. Although there are teachers who use the community garden, I will be focusing more on the student aspect (sorry teachers!).
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Mr. Tanish, Julienne B., Claire H., and Anna T. for providing the necessary information for this article.