Recently, when I was attending a workshop, I was reminded by the participants of this park that I used to manage. So I deliberately made a trip down memory lane last week by visiting the site.Unfortunately, there were so much changes to the site and the former PUB building was no longer there, thus creating a void to the otherwise shady area. The slope that was heavily planted and shaded from Bukit Timah Road was now undergoing some development works and the screening plants were removed.
However, lots of the hardscape e.g. signage, Adopt-A-Park (AAP) plaque, blue railings, playground equipment, and plants e.g. Clove Tree, Lotus, were still around to remind me of the fond time I had managing this small neighbourhood park. The AAP projects that we had with KK Women's and Children's Hospital and Monk's Hill Secondary School were still vividly in my mind but the patina copper plaques were already stained by time.
Back then, I was re-landscaping the park to evoke the four senses - sight, sound, smell and touch. Eventually, we did not have enough funds to implement everything we planned but we did manage to put up huge wind chimes on the trees, plant up colourful, fragrant and herb and spice plants etc. This brings me to an incident related to me by my former staff. A couple of years ago, she took over to manage this site and informed me she came across an internet article about the haunted stories of the park, the mysterious wind chimes etc and she was tickled pink by it because she knew the history from me. When I googled it, I found the website and am attaching it below for reference:
I will not divulge how we hung the wind chimes up the tall rain trees but I must emphasize that there was nothing paranormal about it. In addition, the few rain trees also had some native Hoya growing on them back then. Now the landscape has changed considerably. In fact, in the 80's there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet along the Kampong Java Road side with tennis courts and the pond was already there. I had nightmares imagining a crocodile in the pond when I walked there.
Those were the days of the past and this short trip to the park brought back so much nostalgia.
