The man behind Tanaman.

The ground

On a new site, most people look up. At the trees, the fence line, the view. His attention goes down.

What lies under a Malaysian garden is often bad news. Heavy clay that holds water like a bowl. Red laterite that rings under a cangkul. In newer housing estates, a thin skin of topsoil spread over whatever the builders left behind: broken brick, sand, cement wash. Then the afternoon storm arrives and the water has nowhere to go.

Plants put into ground like that look fine on handover day. They have just come from a nursery. The trouble starts a few months later, quietly, from the roots up, long after the photographs have been taken. That is the garden he set himself against. The one that looks good once.

So Tanaman starts from the ground. Tanah first. Sort out where the water goes. Open the soil so roots can breathe. Put back the organic matter and the life that construction took away. Only then, plants.

The mix

He could not buy the soil he wanted, so he made it.

That is how a landscaping company in Puchong came to have its own worm compost, its own ornamental soil mix, a foliar spray called Plant Vitamin, and a bagged garden soil named, with a straight face, Honest Garden Soil. None of it started as a product line. It started as what the crew needed on site.

The mix is where he is most like a cook. An aroid wants something chunky and open that its roots can breathe in. A lawn wants something else entirely. A vegetable bed wants to be rich. A planter on a rooftop has to be light enough for the slab beneath it and quick to drain, and still hold water through a hot, windy afternoon. One recipe cannot do all of that. He will explain why for as long as you let him.

Easy to keep

His third fixation is the least glamorous and may be the most valuable. He designs gardens to be easy to look after.

It comes from doing the maintenance. A company that only designs never finds out what its drawings cost to keep. Tanaman looks after gardens monthly and on request. House gardens. Condominium grounds. A commercial building. The crew knows which hedge needs a ladder, which bed cannot be reached without stepping on something, which pretty tree fills the pool filter every morning. All of it goes back into the next design. Plants chosen for the size they will reach, not the size they arrive. Thirsty plants together, on the same tap. A path wide enough for a wheelbarrow.

The test of a garden is not handover day. It is an ordinary Tuesday in year five.

A rooftop in the middle of the city

That way of thinking has taken Tanaman to a rooftop in KL. There is a food garden there: galvanised raised planters, things to eat growing in them.

A rooftop is about the hardest habitat a plant can be given. Full sun. Wind. Heat coming off the concrete. Every kilo of wet soil counted against the structure. Nowhere for water to go except the drain you gave it. It is a soil-and-mix problem before it is anything else, which makes it his kind of problem.

In an office lobby, the plants are Tanaman rental plants. Another difficult habitat: air-conditioning, low light, no rain. Different place. Same method.

Everything in nature

He will tell you he loves everything in nature. It is also why Tanaman teaches. Edible garden workshops with schoolchildren. Worm compost demonstrations where people get their hands in it.

Tanaman means plants. Ask him about plants, though, and he will start lower down. With the tanah. With what the roots are sitting in. Build the place properly and life does the rest.