SINGAPORE – The Lowveld’s Rebel Gardener, Leon Kluge, has done it again. Kluge and Bayley Luutomes, partners in their Asian business Kluge Luutomes Design, wowed judges at the Singapore Garden Festival and won a gold award for the best outdoor lighting display. He told Lowvelder on Wednesday that they were “very chuffed”.
The garden Kluge and Luutomes created looked like a wonderland of plants and lighting and said being invited to come and display at this festival was always on his bucket list and winning an award was a career highlight.
“The Singapore Garden Festival takes place every two years at the Gardens by the Bay. This venue is considered the world’s most beautiful and expensive garden. The festival is sponsored by the Singapore government as part of their continuous drive to promote a green environment, something they have perfected. It is the biggest garden show in Asia and the largest tropical garden show on earth. It takes place on ten hectares and it will take you two days if you had to walk through it”, he said.
Every two years the organisers compile a list of the world’s best landscape designers and only landscape architects who have won a “best on show” at any other world garden show, stand chance to be invited to the extravaganza. The unique concept of his garden was titled “Back to Nature”. In their motivation to the judges, Kluge and Luutomes said: “Our world is in a constant tug of war between man’s endeavours to build and develop his environment at the detriment of nature. This garden seeks to integrate man and the biosphere by creating and installing man-made elements such as the pod seating area and steps into a natural landscape and pond.
“The pod is nestled into a bank and is unified with the landscape through living arms that embrace the structure, symbolising an harmonious, symbiotic coexistence with nature taking prominence in our built environment. The man-made concrete path is gently being reclaimed back by nature slowly reshaping it to nature’s uneven contours, demonstrating how we also need to adapt to nature’s way. The large dying tree in the garden represents man’s devastation on our forests, but the two younger trees represent a future of hope if man can just find its way back to nature.”
Kluge says planning such a big project takes a year and finding the budget remains a challenge. “I wanted to use plants never used before in Singapore and I jumped on the plane and returned to my hometown, Nelspruit. Where else can you find better goodies? I harvested seeds from plants, most of them next to highways, and it became part of the main plant pallet.
The Asian market loved it and most of these plants are now going to be grown and sold as commercial household plants. The African foxglove (Ceratotheca triloba) is a common plant of the area and the other, Melinis nerviglumis, is a grass and makes a beautiful ornamental display.” The trees Kluge brought from Kuala Lampur and the waterplants were sourced in London.
Getting the job done didn’t come without stress and Kluge says he had to deal with compost that wasn’t ready to use, so with the excessive heat conditions they had to truck in sand to help cool the compost down. But, nine days later with little sleep and lots of fast food as staple, they were done and reaped the benefit with an award. Kluge says his biggest market is currently in Asia and that was the reason he relocated to New Zealand.
“I bought a farm at the sea only 40 minutes from Wellington where I can grow my plants for projects and the Kluge Luutomes plant range sold in garden centres across the country.” They have offices in Wellington, Auckland and the Cape and he still returns to South Africa for about four months per year.
Also read ‘Rebel gardener’ now one of world’s best
He will be doing his first show garden at the Cape Town Flower in October. But in the meantime he will be building a South African Garden in South Korea before jetting off to the Caribbean where he will build a garden in the middle of a river on the island of Martinque.
WATCH: Back to Nature by Kluge LeeTomes Designs
