“Despite coming from various backgrounds, people here use their gardens in similar ways to express gratitude, generosity and devotion. It’s something truly special that I haven’t seen much written in other cities.”-Melody Lynch, a Canadian researcher and a geographer from McGill University, Montreal, Canada
DEAR friends, I am glad that the small home gardens in Kuching City have inspired Melody Lynch, a Canadian researcher and a geographer from McGill University, Montreal, Canada to publish a booklet entitled “Life Happens in the Gardening and Wellbeing in Kuching.”
After realising that there wasn’t much literature written about urban agriculture in Kuching, Lynch together with Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) decided to conduct over 100 interviews and soil analyses in the Kuching gardens, ranging from small home plots to community and rooftop farms.
One of those who assisted her was Feniellia Diwvya, a UNIMAS master’s graduate, who helped guide her fieldwork around the city. In a special interview with Sarawak Tribune published yesterday, Lynch said the project deepened her understanding of how city life and nature coexisted.
One of the things that stood out in their findings was not what people grew but why they grew it.
Feniellia, for example, explained that people of different faiths tended to grow certain plants for religious use.
Some Buddhists, for example, grew fruits like pomelos and pomegranates for temple offerings or for good fortune.
Some Christians grew palms for Palm Sunday while Muslims share their harvests as ‘sadaqah’ (charity).
Lynch pointed out that this spiritual dimension reflected Kuching’s unique social fabric where people of different faiths and cultures found common ground through gardening.
“Despite coming from various backgrounds, people here use their gardens in similar ways to express gratitude, generosity and devotion.
“It’s something truly special that I haven’t seen much written in other cities,” she said.
Feniellia added that almost every local household, regardless of ethnicity, maintained at least one plant dating back to their roots.
She noted that children who came from agricultural background would always have a small pot of pandan (tropical plant with fragrant leaves), some lemongrass or a papaya tree.
How very true! I guess my love for gardening comes from watching my grandparents work on the soil.
When I was young, my siblings and I used to spend our year-end school holidays in my grandparents’ village in Kanowit district, a town and administrative district in the Sibu Division of Sarawak.
My grandparents would bring us to their rice fields and pepper garden.
We would play around in the sun as they weeded the grasses and worked on their farm.
Those carefree days were among the best days of my childhood life.
There were no obligations, bills or major worries, allowing for a life focused on play, exploration and imagination.
At the end of the school holidays, my siblings would return to Sibu town where we studied and lived with our parents.
Now, decades later, touching the earth in my backyard garden provides a ‘grounding’ experience that acts as a therapeutic escape from daily stresses in my life.
Gardening also offers me the unique, rewarding experience of cultivating life from a tiny seed. For example, I love to watch my lady fingers and chilli plants grow.
Watching them thrive from tiny seeds to producing fruits provides me with a powerful sense of accomplishment and boosts my selfesteem.
Lady fingers and chillies are exciting to watch daily.
The lady fingers produce beautiful, large hibiscus-like flowers while chillies provide vibrant, colourful fruits (red and green) that are aesthetically pleasing.
I grow both plants in pots in front of my house.
I look at them every morning before I leave for work and I look at them at night when I come from work.
While papaya trees will not grow in my backyard garden no matter how hard I try, I am proud of the pots of lovely pandan and lemongrass that flourish under my care.
I love to make refreshing herbal tea from my pandan and lemongrass leaves, especially on my days off.
The pandan and lemongrass tea is very easy to make, requiring only 3-4 ingredients and 20-30 minutes.
The ingredients are: 4-6 cups of water (approximately 1 –1.5 litres); 3-4 stalks of fresh lemongrass; 4-6 fresh pandan leaves; rock sugar or honey (to taste).
I also have mulberry trees and sometimes use the leaves to make herbal tea.
One plant that I grow which dates back to my grandparents’ days is tapioca (cassava).
It is a highly resilient, drought-tolerant and lowmaintenance crop that thrives in poor soil where others fail, providing a reliable source of carbohydrates.
Yes, you can eat its rich tuberous roots and leafy greens.
The leaves can be cooked (similar to spinach) while the stems are used for propagation.
Stir-fried tapioca leaves with rice which is often featured in Malaysian and Indonesian cuisine.
When my siblings and I stayed with our grandparents, we ate a lot of stir-fried tapioca leaves (‘pucuk ubi’ or ‘daun ubi’ fried with anchovies and a bit of ginger but the leaves were never stir-fried with rice.
Stir-fried tapioca leaves with rice is a modern invention.
During their research for the book ‘Life Happens in the Garden: On Gardening and Wellbeing in Kuching, Malaysia,” Lynch and Feniellia mapped over 3,500 urban gardens across Kuching City although the true number was likely higher.
They also explored how gardens contributed to food security in Kuching Lynch emphasised that in Kuching, urban agriculture was far more than a hobby.
She said it was part of the city’s food system.
“When people grow and eat what they plant, it becomes part of their food system.
When they sell some of it to their neighbours, maybe just a few fruits a day, that’s part of the economic and food systems.
And when they share it, that’s part of the social system,” she explained.
Lynch pointed out that even the smallest gardens could make a difference for low-income urban families, offering them access to fresh and healthy produce.
She suggested that the government should continue encouraging people to grow their own food by allowing vegetable gardens and promoting them as part of a Healthy City.
“The government can also provide small funding opportunities to help people access raised beds and other materials, offer basic training and address policies that restrict the burning of plastics to improve food safety,” Lynch added.
She revealed that her study had found traces of heavy metals, particularly lead, in some food samples, a result of pollution from open burning of plastics, among other sources.
She explained that lead did not decompose and could stay in the soil for decades and be absorbed by plants.
And exposure to lead could be very harmful to children and those with poor nutrition.
Lynch hopes that the local authorities will take steps to address these issues as well as provide micro-grants and more training for safe urban farming procedures.
So over to you all, Kuching South City Council (MBKS) and other local authorities in the city.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at adelinel888@ gmail.com.
