Green Almanac Preview

2018 Medini Green PARKS

n e e r G of

Valuable Information

More in a garden grows than what the gardener sows

Spanish Proverb

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Contents 02 03 05 06 08 10 14 16 18 20 22 26 28 32 34 38 39 40 42 44 46 48 50 54 58 60 62 64 68 72 75 80 82 84 88 90 92 94

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD CONTENTS SEASONS Harvest Moon Joy of the Harvest Harvest Festivals Around The World Wet Season Dry Season OUTDOOR LIFE Birds of Medini Insects of Medini Wildflowers of Medini Green Exercise City Riders The Outdoor Office Nature Walk EDIBLE LIFE Natural Colour Local Seasonal Fruits Lowland Vegetables Plant-based Protein Herbal Digestives Wild Caught Local Fish Durian Kings of Johor Goodness In A Jar CHANGING THE FUTURE Effective Change Last Straw Johor Responsible Water The Outdoor Classroom COMMUNITY Generation Green Konichiwa Iskandar Puteri Communities In Transition Connecting The Community APPENDIX Volunteering Festival Advert

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Seasons

We may not have winters and summers here in the tropics but yes, we do have seasons. Wet and dry ones, which are changing with global warming. Seasonal festivals that we follow according to our cultural heritage populate our calendars, with new ones discovered as the world shrinks, that are different yet familiar. The eternal cycle of seeding and harvesting remains a metaphor that is embedded deep in our psyche. Acknowledging the seasons and their meaning, grounds and orients us.

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Outdoor Life The great outdoors is an idea we want to nurture as an antidote to the stresses of urban life and an important counter culture to the migration indoors into air conditioned malls. With increasing evidence that nature is essential to human thriving, we need to rethink how we can make it part of our regular lives, be it work or play. We need to retune our abilities to notice and recognize the abundance and diversity of flora and fauna that we cohabit with even in the heart of our cities.

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Olive-backed Sunbird Cinnyris jugularis Attractive small birds with the males having plain olive-green upperparts, iridescent blue-black forehead, throat and breast and yellow belly and vent. Females can be separated from other sunbirds by a combination of obvious down-curved bill, all yellow underparts and extensive white on tail. Originally from mangrove habitat, it has adapted well to humans, even building their nests in human dwellings. Native to Malaysia, it feeds largely on nectar, and also takes small insects and spiders, especially when feeding chicks.

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Birds of Medini Along with many new residents arriving to make their home in Medini are some feathered friends who flew in, checked out the neighbourhood, and decided to stay. Heritage Forest is now home to an everincreasing variety of birds, many native to Malaysia, some from further afield.

Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius The common tailorbird is a brightly coloured bird, with olive-green upperparts and whitish underparts. Tailorbirds get their name from the way their nest is constructed. The edges of a large leaf are pierced and sewn together with plant fibre or spider silk to make a cradle in which the actual nest is built. Lalang and other materials are used to line the inside of the nest that would keep the nestlings warm. They eat insects such as beetles and bugs.

Heritage Forest participated in the 2018 annual MY Garden Birdwatch audit conducted by the Malaysian Nature Society, which covered 146 valid count sites nationwide and recorded 3,503 birds of 86 different species.

Eleven species of birds were seen at the park.

Commonest species seen were the House Crow and Javan Myna which adapt well to urban areas and are normally found in close proximity to human activity.

The number of species seen and the quantity of birds visiting the park are expected to grow as the park matures providing more food sources, nesting sites and shelter for birds. The planting of trees which provide food for the birds, which can be in the form of specific types of seeds, berries, other fruit and flower nectar, will help to attract birds.

Javan Myna Acridotheres javanicus

We hope that, by the next count in 2019, our avian friends would have settled in nicely and produced offspring, and more species have decided to make the forest their home. In the meantime, we invite you to drop by with your binoculars or cameras and get to know the birds in the forest. Here is a short introduction to 11 of the species you can see in the forest and park.

Dark slaty-grey plumage, yellow orange bill and yellow feet. Its habitats are parks, gardens, terrestrial and urban area. Besides feeding on insects and fruits, these birds can feed on human leftover food. It is native to Java and Bali. This hollow-nesting species nests and breeds in sheltered hollows in trees or buildings. The loose nesting requirement has increased the survival rate of the Javan Myna in urban areas.

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Edible Life Food nourishes in many ways. We see it as enabling better health, creativity, knowledge and community building. It is a powerful determinant in outcomes affecting public health, environment and even a democracy, when we eat together at a table of shared values and civil discourse. Building a new culture around food, around its best values whilst diminishing the unsustainability of its worst, is a delicious revolution whose time has come.

Photos taken at Green U Market which happens on the first Saturday of every month at Edible Park

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Blue Pea Clitoria ternatea Colour: Blue Part used: Flower

Spanish Needles Bidens pilosa Colour: Gold Part used: Flower

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Lime & Blue Pea Citrofortuella microcarpa and Clitoria ternatea Colour: Purple Parts used: Fruit and flower

Turmeric Curcuma longa Colour: Yellow Part used: Root

Hibiscus Hibiscus rosa-sinensis Colour: Pale red Part used: Flower

Sweet Leaf Sauropus androgynus Colour: Green Part used: Leaves

Natural Colour As the saying goes, we eat with our eyes first.

The mere sight of food triggers neurons in the hypothalamus. Subjects presented food to eat in the dark reported a critically missing element for enjoying any cuisine: the appearance of food. Colouring substances have been used to enhance the appeal of foods since the beginning of recorded history.

Research supports the idea that certain colours suppress our appetite while others excite it.

Roselle Hibiscus sabdariffa Colour: Red Part used: Calyx

Here in the tropics we are particularly blessed with a wide range of plants that grow easily in our climate, whose flowers, leaves, roots, even the whole plant, can be used to extract natural food dyes that are safe to consume, make the dishes look appetizing, and add their own subtle flavour to the dish. In most cases, the colour is extracted by boiling the part of the plant that yields the colour, while some are added as an ingredient during cooking to add colour and taste.

Certain plants or flowers are added during food preparation for their visual appeal, but also for their health benefits. Such as the humble turmeric. The grated or pounded turmeric root is used for marinating fish before frying, or added to the spices for making briyani. It is used widely in Asian cooking for the vibrant yellow colour it lends to the dish, the flavour it adds, as well as to aid digestion. As a bonus, it has powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects.

Here are 8 plant-derived dyes, and the plants we used to extract them, which are all grown in the Edible Park. Depending on the harvest, these plants may be purchased from our farm stand on Saturday mornings.

Mugwort Artemisia vulgaris Colour: Dark Green

Have fun experimenting to come up with your own rainbow colours.

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Changing the Future One of the hardest things to do is change, changing ourselves, changing the future. Change is the catalyst that ensures the remarkable journey of human progress continues its march forward. The people responsible for change are both ordinary yet extraordinary. They are creatives, scientists, activists, teachers, ordinary citizens and more. They vote, share ideas, organize others and provide the momentum that enables this essential dynamic to propel us forward into a better future.

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Vegetable garden at SJK (C) Woon Hwa, Kangkar Pulai, Iskandar Puteri

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Last Straw Johor Kelab Belia South Key and JOGreen are collaborating on an initiative called #LastStrawJohor that is informed by fellow environmental organization Greenpeace’s statement that urges for change beyond our own personal efforts.

“Our efforts to reduce our own plastic footprint and recycle are admirable and important, but often plastic straws, bags, bottles, and packaging are pushed on us before we have a chance to refuse, or we need products that are only offered packaged in plastic. We operate in a broken system, it’s clogged with plastic, and the people controlling the machine won’t turn it off!.....stop the plastic pollution problem at its source – the corporations that have created it and the governments that are failing to regulate it.” - Greenpeace The initiative began with Kelab Belia collecting straws that would have been thrown out as garbage from local food and beverage outlets. These will be used to create an art installation piece at Harvest Festival to present visually what this accumulated waste physically looks like. In terms of numbers, each restaurant outlet participating is generating on average 173 per day, 1215 per week and 5266 straws per month. We intend to use these powerful images to urge the general public to sign our petition to show their support in asking for stronger action to be taken.

We want to use this support to urge lawmakers in our state government to now consider regulating the problem.

We are also approaching food and beverage outlets and corporations along the way to consider taking the brave step forward to stop providing straws at their own establishments. The problem requires change and action on all three fronts: civil society, public policy and the private sector.

We hope this will inspire citizens to pressure their MP’s and the food outlets that they frequent to create the momentum so urgently needed to fix this runaway problem.

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Nature class at the Studio at Edible Park

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Community

At Medini Green Parks, we have more than community, we have a community of communities.

It’s like the park itself, with different sections and microclimates. We seed, we tend, we harvest or we simply sit back and enjoy their presence and their interactions with each other. They come from different generations and different parts of the world, or they are local and indigenous. Our mission is to build a social ecosystem for them to thrive and bloom.

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Generation Green Since the park opened, we have been particularly gratified at the number of little people who have turned up to visit, and immediately made themselves at home.

As children, many of us grew up in kampongs where we were free to roam within the perimeters of the kampong, with all adults in the village keeping a watchful eye on all the children as if they were their own.

There is growing evidence that unsupervised outdoor play is vital for children’s development and connection to nature. And yet, it appears that children today spend much less time outdoors than their parents did. This phenomenon called nature-deficit is thought to contribute to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.

The Edible Park is a space where children can learn, play, socialise, and be creative in an environment embodying planet-friendly values and practices, which we believe they can pick up. And bring forward into the future.

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Edible Park is a five acre edible landscape and platform for cultivating community around current ideas of sustainable living. The park is a hub for community to develop around new ideas of waste management, green energy, sustainable living, local produce and farm to table.

Heritage Forest is a seven acre wild landscape providing an escape in the city while showcasing our local botanic heritage and re establishing biodiversity and eco services. The park is a hub for community to develop around urban nature and wilderness.