dry grass singing

notes from a green island

For quite some time now i've been musing about the civil servants (at least that's what i believe they are) who are responsible for designing our, for want of a better name, horticultural landscape. Who are these men and women, what do they do, and where do they do what they do? What drives them, and is there a point at which they can look on the work of their hands and say, "It is finished"?

i imagine them poring over blueprints that map out the green spaces in our city - each public park, each traffic island and road-divider, each pavement, each parking lot - all of which have to be lovingly tended so that life will flourish and grow. Sometimes these anonymous figures take on a life of their own, chatting over tree catalogues and coffee in the office pantry, "So, brazilian ferns are the latest in-thing huh...."

It must give them quite a kick to see, springing miraculously from purchase orders and tax invoices, conifers and palms standing side by side on the same basketball-court-sized handkerchief of land. Where else but in Singapore would one find such a Frankenstinian combination of trees from completely contrasting climatic zones, looking for all the world as if they had spent the last millennia evolving together in mutual harmony and accord?

Somewhere in the dusty archives of the National Parks Board there is a hidden parable about our national identity, waiting to be unearthed.

posted by eothen @ 5:22 PM