Garden power in New York and Melbourne

From New York City to Melbourne, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) recently showcased Singapore’s garden attractions to woo Americans and Australians who love the lush green landscape of Singapore.

In the Big Apple, the STB created an urban sanctuary in midtown Manhattan with the staging of an orchid/bromeliad garden at the 32nd Macy’s Flower Show last last month.

The Macy’s Annual Flower Show, held at the department store’s flagship Herald Square location, is one of the United States’ premier flower shows. In 30,480 square meters of space, the show features more than one-million flowers and more than a 1,000 species of colourful trees, plants and flowers from six continents.

The show attracts more than 500,000 visitors annually.

The STB flower show sponsorship promoted Singapore in a variety of ways.  A 1.5-minute Uniquely Singapore advertisement ran on the Jumbotron video boards outside Macy’s on the busy 34th Street & 7th Avenue intersection, the most highly trafficked street corner in NYC with more than 10 million impressions in a three-week period.  The Uniquely Singapore logo was displayed 15,000 show brochures, posters throughout the store and in an aggressive advertising schedule that includes New York’s largest newspapers.

Meanwhile, down under, the STB team in Australia proved they had green fingers when their sponsored garden at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show won two gold medals.

The awards, given at the show which is considered the leading gardening event in Australia and one of the top in the world, were for Best Show Garden 2006 and The Royal Horticultural Society of Victoria Inc - Comeadow Gold Award for outstanding landscape design at MIFGS 2006.

Singapore Garden - Lush was designed by Australian award landscape designer, Jim Fogarty, who was in Singapore last year for the pre-launch of the Singapore Garden Festival.
This was the first time STB had sponsored a garden at this event. The winning garden featured over 2,000 Singapore orchids as well as Anthurium sp. (cut flower) and tropical foliage. The floral arrangements were created by Richard Go who has worked extensively in Singapore.

Approximately over 100,000 consumers attended the 5-day event which was held from 5-9 April.

STB’s involvement at the show was promoted in the official handbook which was inserted as a supplement in Victoria’s leading newspaper, the Herald Sun. Over 630,000 copies were circulated with an additional 60,000 copies made available to consumers at the show.  Another 10,000 brochures of the Singapore Lush Garden were given out at the Singapore garden exhibit.