SINGAPORE — A man who goes into the forest of Bukit Panjang to pick wild durian every night when the trees are in season. A group of people who go to Ang Mo Kio Park every day to meditate around a rubber tree. A man who would end his training sessions for IPPT runs at a certain Bodhi tree at the Bidadari Cemetery.

Singaporeans’ special relationship with trees is the subject of an ongoing exhibition at the National Library Building titled Singapore, Very Old Tree.

A Singapore Memory Project spearheaded by artist Zhao Renhui and writer Adeline Chia, the exhibition comprises 30 images, in lightbox and postcard formats, of people posing with their favourite tree.

The title was taken from the caption of a vintage Singapore postcard (Zhao is an avid collector) and the exhibition’s black and white images were hand-tinted by illustrator-friend Sokkuan Tye as a nod to the look of the old postcards.

“The general impetus for this project was that we love trees and feel that people don’t look attentively and lovingly enough at these ubiquitous features of our landscape. Although people know Singapore as a Garden City, the image is ultimately an impersonal one of anonymous trees and gardeners,” explained Chia.

Over six months, the couple and their small team searched for fellow tree-lovers who had unique personal connections to specific trees, tapping into social media, blogs and organisations like the National Parks Board (NParks) and Nature Society (Singapore). Some folks from the latter group, such as Tony O’Dempsey and Goh Si Guim, would have a ready story for them, said Chia. Other times, it was the tree that came first, particularly those that already have a well-known history, such as The Substation’s famous old Malayan Banyan tree and the tree at Tanglin Trust School, which had been saved from being cut down by a student protest.

“Other times, we just did a lot of driving around and looking. That was how we found Mr Ramanathan under his mangosteen tree in Kallang Basin,” said Chia. The tree had grown from a sapling that the 70-year-old odd-job labourer had taken when the parent tree was bulldozed to clear land in the Old Kallang Airport area 20 years ago.

Their tree project took them all over the island, to some unusual places. They had followed people into the wilder areas of Upper Thomson in search of a lost orchard called the Han Rambutan Orchard where artists and intellectuals, such as Chinese artist Xu Beihong, hung out.

The rubber tree in Ang Mo Kio Park was a particularly memorable tree for Chia. “I enjoyed speaking to the group of people who would walk around it as part of a meditation exercise to ‘absorb’ the energy from the tree. Their path is so well-trod that there is a circle of dead grass around that tree. I really wanted to join in but they said I didn’t have the requisite training, which was some eight-day Buddhist workshop,” she said.

For artist Zhao, the tree that proved hardest to shoot was the famous one behind The Substation. “It wasn’t technically a banyan tree anymore. During this project, the tree was being transplanted to make way for the new SMU building. I felt that transplanting a tree was a very nice but complicated gesture. The transplantation of trees in Singapore provides a compelling picture of how we try to negotiate nature and history in the face of development.”

In some ways, there was a sense of urgency in doing the show. “Some of them are getting cut down but there are a lot of stories of people who go out of their way to help save trees,” said Chia, citing artist Jacquelyn Soo, who had started a petition to save the banyan tree at Goodman Arts Centre, which had been in danger of being cut down due to road expansion. But at the same time, she added: “Some of these trees are so majestic and old and will outlast all of us. That’s one of the reasons why we have chosen to show them in their full glory with wide lens, with the human figure being very tiny.” It was an idea that had come about after the couple went on a road trip through California’s redwood forests last year.

Incidentally, the exhibition comes at a time when there are efforts to plant trees around the civic district, such as a mature rain tree in front of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall and, soon, the transplanting of five new Angsana trees into the Esplanade Park.

“It totally makes sense,” said Chia. “I had a friend from Lisbon who visited (our) exhibition, and looking at the pictures he said Singapore’s greenery was amazing and truly out of this world. He then said the biggest public square in Lisbon had no trees. It was unthinkable to me. No trees? What were they going to do at noon? Burn? Go blind from the glare? To us hardened Singaporeans, we’re driving past lush roads and tree-lined estates and bushy overhead bridges and not seeing how beautiful and green the city is.”

Singapore, Very Old Tree runs until May 28, 10am to 9pm, Level 10 Promenade, National Library Building. Free admission. A talk on the exhibition will be held on May 16, 2pm, Level 1, Visitors’ Briefing Room, where the exhibition’s book and postcard set will also be launched.