We are inviting YOU to come and join us for a day of fun as you discover the secrets that go into preparing for a romantic garden wedding. See unique wedding settings in an outdoor environment and speak to our experts on planning an outdoor event with Touching Hearts – professional wedding planners on hand to offer free consultation.

Flower Series will be present and open for discussion on flower choices and prices and to offer their best advise on wedding decor.

Other interesting vendors will include bridal gown hire, wedding cupcakes and personalized wedding favours.

Wedding styled refreshments will be served by experienced wedding caterers, as cocktail canapes.

A free garden showing will take place for interested couples to see the lush garden venues within Tropical Spice Garden to host their perfect, dream garden wedding.

Really its a relaxed atmosphere of fun and getting to know the excellent wedding providers we have in Penang and coming up close to them to ask them real questions you’ve always wanted to know about planning a wedding.

Come and take part in our Wedding Photography competition and stand a chance to win 6 month free bridal photography entrance!

Admission is free.

Happy eco-workshop kids - Little Green Frogs

Cathering Labrooy, our intern from UPM, worked steadily on putting the programs, notes and resources together for 3 weeks prior to running the programs. Having grown up with children all her life, especially amongst her mother’s kindergarten kids, Cat was a natural in holding the kids interest and attention for long enough to finish her sentence.

She started Day 1 with introducing the concept of ecosystems and the kids got to build their very own terrarium, basically a self-containing garden ecosystem in a jar. The kid layered their own individual jars with coloured pebbles, moss, soil and a plant and were given terse instructions to LOOK AFTER their little garden. The kids also were invited to dirty their hands in earth as they each a go at planting sunflower seeds to bring home.

Building a mini terrarium

Happy kids with their mini ecosysyem, terrariums

Day 2 perhaps didn’t go quite as smoothly in Cat’s eyes. “Spice tea just isn’t meant for kids” she quipped at the end of the class. We had them brewing their own cups of spice tea and making fruit salad as their snacks – novel, healthy and fun we thought but we couldn’t have been more wrong. Spice + Tea brought out furrowed eyebrows and much discontent and well, the fruit salad was just ignored. An introduction to healthy eating..Jamie Oliver inspired shall be the title of my next holiday workshop for kids!

Kids using the batu tumbuk to crush spices in Kids Workshop

They also learned to colour pictures using natural materials like annatto, turmeric and blue pea. They loved the fact that flowers, root and seeds could colour their favourtie pictures!

Cat redeemed her worksop by Day 3 when the kids launched into recycling, vermicomposting and handmade paper.

The kids raced against each others team to sort out rubbish in to ‘recyclable’ and ‘non-recyclable’ piles. It was great just to teach kids that straws and tetra paks of ribena can not be recycled – and thus, I dont want to see this trash in my ‘Plastic’ recycling bins at the Spice Garden any more! Yes, this was my little hidden agenda – how to keep the spice garden bins tidy

Show N Tell at Eco Kids Workshop

At first the kids looked in disbelief as Cat ushered them to soil their fingers and feel the smooth and slippery exterior of the worms on their skin. By the end of the session, they were proudly holding their new pets and vowing to look after them at home.

It was such an eye opener for the kids to see paper being created before their eyes through a somewhat lengthy process of soaking paper, blending, soaking again and lifting out with a netted frame before leaving it to dry. And then of course to colour a picture using turmeric roots, annatto seeds and blue pea flowers was just such a novel and special thing to do – they loved it!

Day 4 was the icing on the cake with making  their own orange pomanders [using oranges, cloves and ribbons] and to top it all of, we had a very special soap making activity. We had purchased a home made soap set on line and Cat ingeniously devised a way to involve all the kids by allowing them to mix their own colours to produce fabulously bright blobs of soap.

Penang pomanders using oranges and soap

Mixing colours for handmade soap

Each day came replete with worksheets, games, snacks and a load of fun. A huge shout out to Cat and her assistants who just ran the classes so enthusiastically and professionally. Of course my dear, you have just opened up a box that can never be closed again. Will you be back next semester to run another fantastic holiday workshop for us?

To stay in touch with our kids programs and more at Tropical Spice Garden, Penang, request to be on our mailing list today!

Eco-Kids Holiday Workshop

Hi Folks!

We are pleased to announce our ‘Little Green Frogs’ Eco-Kid Workshops this coming school holidays from 14 – 17 March 2011.

These are specially designed workshops for kids aged 6 – 10 by our UPM horticulturist intern, Catherine Labrooy.

She has assembled some fabulous, hands-on eco experiences from kids covering a wide range of topics from learning about vermicomposting, to making handmade soap to creating and bringing home your very own ‘terrarium’ in a glass jar!

Prices starting from RM15 per workshop inclusive of refreshments.

Parents looking for holiday activities, look no further. Our eco-workhops will keep the kids enthused in a fantastic, cool environment at Tropical Spice Garden.

Call us today at 04-8811797 or email catherinelabrooy@gmail.com

Limited spaces available!

Finishing touches

Ieong Tok and Chocco were married last Sunday under delightful weather. I’ve figured out that weddings actually do make me cry – when the bride enters and there is an expectant hush in the air and then suddenly raucuous clapping as the bride makes her final descent down the aisle as a single woman! I love it!

Gold Sashes awaiting

Tuning Up for the Bridal March

Sept 12 was no different when beautiful Chocco made her (long) entrance with her father. She made it look easy though. Secretly, she had actually been waiting in the Museum after a short trek up the hill in slippers. Just at the last bend, on a rattan chair did she place her delicate 3 inch heels to meet with her groom.

Our star couple of the day hailed from Alor Star and despite the busy Raya weekend and the blowout on the Penang Bridge, we had a full house of their friends and family who wouldn’t have missed this special day for the world.

Enter Chocco and her father

From meeting Ieong and Chocco several months ago, I was pleasantly surprised when I received the phone call to say they would like to confirm a garden wedding at Tropical Spice Garden. It’s not often we get adventurous locals who are willing to break with the norm and do something exciting and new – like wed in the jungle!

Love the Queens wave!

Happily married couple walking down the stone aisle

Furthermore, they even continued with their tea ceremony here whilst refreshments were being served to other guests.

Silver Suits & White Balloons

It was touching to see Ieong give his grandfather a warm hug from behind when it was time for family photographs. The grandfather had obviously made double effort to see his grandson wed his college sweetheart – being slightly unsteady on his feet. But the Garden team are always on stand by to giving a helping hand to make all guests comfortable and happy.

My Friends, My Family

Sailing away to happiness and success

Spice & Flower bouquet for Dato

After having attended a ‘Gardens, Parks & Flowers in Malaysia’ meeting earlier this year in KL chaired by Dato’ Seri herself, I realized that we have now on our hands, a federal Minister committed and passionate about gardens and parks in Malaysia. Her vision for her time serving as Tourism Minister is to raise the standards and profiles of gardens and parks in Malaysia – believing that our rich and prolific natural heritage and biodiversity should be promoted to the world as a tourism asset as well.

So it was with great cheer that we welcomed Dato’ to Tropical Spice Garden yesterday when she requested a visit in hre usually busy schedule. Upon entering, I showed her the currently flowering Victoria amazonica (Amazon lily). She insisted our usually more shy Garden Curator, Kenny, follow her to give a running commentary of all the species that sparked her interest.

Dato looking at the Black Lily

The hordes of press and TV stations were having a field day with Dato’ stopping at every flower or plant of interest. She even climbed off the beaten trail to stand beneath the gorgeous Johannesteijsmania magnifica  (Silver Joey Palm) pretending to take shelter from the sun and rain as we explained that zinc roofing very possibly took its inspiration from this frond.

Dato insisted meeting all the tourists in the gardens

Having skirted through the Ornamental Trail, we headed for the Spice Terraces where I breathed a sigh of relief that we had just recently received our brand new aluminum signage – so all the trails were well sign posted. Along our walk, Dato’ was most pleased with the shadiness of the gardens emphasizing that gardens in Malaysia must take into consideration our climate when developing gardens, our in-house guides, whom she met 2 of that day – Raja and Uncle Lim and our signage.

The press conference was held at the Bamboo Garden and amongst the things she spoke about was bringing more ‘Music in the Gardens’ for all public gardens in Malaysia – small pockets events as she began to visualize string quartets being played at the Bamboo Garden.

Walking up to see the new restaurant

Her parting words were that she hoped Tropical Spice Garden would one day be in the ’101 Must see Gardens of the World’ and that she would ensure that our gardens would be promoted throughout all her Tourism Malaysia offices in the world.

Thank you for your passion and encouoragement Dato’ and do come back to visit us again now that you will be making more trips to Penang! [note: she recently won the MCA seat for Penang] 

Dato's guestbook entry

We are having a jumble sale selling mostly kitchen and household wares for cheap prices. We are also looking for buys for the slightly larger stuff too!

Here are the details of the event:

Venue: Tropical Spice Garden, Front Entrance

Date: Wed, 24 March 2010

Time: 2 – 5pm

Tell your friends about it! thanks

Anna was a full time sculptor back in the UK where she was commissioned to do work for a private childrens hospitals and private homes. This was before embarked on a teaching career abroad only to land not so far down the road from us. Speaking with Anna, she soons reveals an effervescent personality full of colour and life much like the lantern bug she has created for us entirely from recycled rubber tyres and paint.

Beautiful colours of the lantern bug

The gardens constantly have their beady eyes open for artists and sculptors who who like to exhibit their works in the gardens along our trail. There’s just so much excitement for the family to ‘bump’ into strange and beautiful works on the spice garden journey.

So when exploring ideas for Anna’s sculpture, we knew we wanted it to represent a living creature and more so life too be found in the Malaysian rainforest. Lantern Bugs fit the bill perfectly with their naturally bright occurring bodies spanning the whole colour chart of the rainbow. Anna’s currently in the process of creating another one for us and that of course will be strategically placed to creep up the slope.

Try and spot me!

So come on by and try to spot our new friend at the gardens which joins other glorious pieces including Hitori Nakayama’s ‘Sound of the Earth’ black scultpure and Wong Keng Fuan’s ‘Tree of Life’ mosaic.

And for all you budding artists out there…remember our feelers are out and our doors are open!

Workshop Title:    Acoustic Guitars in Harmony (Paulo Bellinati & Cristina Azuma)

Blending the Combination of Jazz, Classical and Baroque acoustic guitar techniques in Brazilian rhythmic musical flavours and styles.

Venue : Tropical Spice Garden, Teluk Bahang, Penang

Entrance Requirement: By festival ticket (Tickets on sale at Tropical Spice Garden)

More info: www.penangjazz.com