Kent Ridge Park is a 47 ha public park located next to the National University of Singapore campus and Singapore Science Park. The Park was adopted by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Ascendas (Singapore) Pte Ltd in June 2002 under the National Parks Board (NParks) Adopt-A-Park programme. This is a community outreach programme aimed at encouraging a greater sense of public ownership and responsibility for our public parks.
One of the adoption programmes which NUS is spearheading is to create a living diorama of Singapore's vegetation history for public education. The diorama is created in the area near the Pond, with three major plots to show the different phases of the vegetation history, viz.:
1.
Original forest plot. Saplings of forest species from the Nature Reserves or grown from seed will be transplanted here to initiate the process of recovery back to the original forest type.
2.
Agricultural crops plot. The plants to be planted in this plot include gambier, rubber, cocoa, coffee, nutmeg, sugar cane, pineapple, clove, and jambu air laut, indigo, gambier and tapioca.
3.
Current vegetation (adinandra belukar) plot. The present vegetation at the site will be retained except that the non-native (exotic) species will be felled or weeded out.
This programme was completed in 2008 with strong support from the NUS CSC Volunteers under the supervision by Assoc. Prof. Hugh Tan and his team. As all good things come to an end, it is time for OES to say farewell and a ‘BIG THANK YOU’ to all our NUS CSC Volunteers for their support.
