KEBUN KEBUN: A COMMUNITY GARDEN IN MALAYSIA

Life can take you to some interesting places and this week it has taken me to a place called Kebun Kebun in Bangsar which is one of the districts of Kuala Lumpur (KL)  the capital of Malaysia.  I have been in Malaysia since mid October and was expecting to spend most of my time in Chempaka Kuning farm in Kuala Kangsa.  Things did not go as planned, however, and instead I found myself staying with my friend Markiza in KL.

I really missed working with the soil – perhaps being in a big urban city like KL exacerbated the feeling.  So Markiza suggested we went to Kebun Kebun (meaning ‘garden’ in the local language) to see if I could help out there.  Kebun Kebun describes itself as a community garden.  A place that has a variety of resources for growing food and which hosts a wide variety of people. 

This is one of the vegetable gardens which is right at the bottom of the land which makes up the garden.  I spent my first day here picking dead leaves off the overhead canopy which has been put up to grow various sorts of gourds.  I think they are probably a mixed blessing.  The canopy protects from the hot sun but on grey times (of which there are quite a lot in Malaysia because of the rain)it can stop the light getting to the plants.  Hence the need to take off all the dead leaves and twigs.

This is a picture of one of the beds on the terraces which have been made on one of the slopes.  As you can see there is ever present weeding and in this case they were planting out rosella.  Here it is used as a spinach and no one I spoke to knew about the fruit.  I presume the plant does eventually make fruit here despite there not being a dry season which is what in Buddha Garden seems to provoke the plant into fruiting.  I haven’t yet been here long enough to see what happens…..

This is some of the produce picked the second session that I attended

In addition  there was a whole range of greens as well as other vegetables.  All the produce goes to local kitchens making food for vulnerable people like the homeless and asylum seekers.  Some of whom come and help grow the food at the twice weekly open sessions where anyone can come and help out.

One of the things I found most interesting is that one of the reasons the land is designated as community garden is that being under electricity lines it belongs to the local authority which does not allow any buildings to be put up under the cables.  Apparently there is a lot land like this in KL so the potential for making more gardens like this is considerable. 

In this picture from the higher end of the garden you can see how Kebun Kebun stretches under the electricity cables and also the nearby urbanisation which you can’t see when working on the vegetable gardens which are down in the valley behind the trees. I was told  there are many areas like this in KL and I found one just down the road from where I am staying with my friend.

It made my fingers itch just to look at the potential here!  But of course it requires a lot of effort to obtain the necessary permits and other paperwork to designate land like this as a community garden.  At one point local people tried to make a community garden here but there was a complaint from one person that the compost making was attracting rats (not true I was told but….). As a result the necessary permissions could not be obtained and the garden had to be abandoned. 

Maybe one of the basic ingredients of setting up a garden like this is goodwill.

If you would like to see more about kebun kebun you can watch the latest video on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/ZjnxbUV8HEU