HANDPRINT
His volunteer gig with Edible Gardens started out with weekly farming sessions in 2012. With no real plan other than to hang out, he says, “I like to cook and I was just interested in growing my own herbs. Why pay five bucks at the supermarket for basil that I can grow in my flat?!”
About two and a bit years on, those weekly sessions have turned into a serious project where he now spends several weekday evenings and all of the weekends at Edible Gardens’ temporary space on Rowell Road in the Little India precinct. Surprisingly, he’s still a volunteer but that suits him just fine. The sense of achievement he feels when his mushrooms bloom, the conversations he has with the people he meets and the events he helps to organise to promote urban farming are payment enough for him. More than anything else, working with plants, along with his A*Star job, has given him hope.
Rather self-deprecatingly, Jing Yang says, “I’m interesting to people only because I’m a scientist.” But more than being able to talk about fat cells and soil substrates, Jing Yang relishes his part in the creation process. Just as he feels immense pride when he sees his research taking on real-life applications, so, too, do his feathers plump up when his basil plants flourish. “I used to limit myself even before starting on a project by saying things like ‘Oh, I can’t do this’ or ‘I’m not qualified’. But now, I understand how connected I am with my environment. And that insight keeps me motivated. Of course the plants would grow anyway without me, but they show me what I’m capable of. I have my handprint on them the minute I commit to planting those seeds. Because of that, I want to make sure that I see them through.”
