At new lunar year holiday, 14 February 2015, Palembang Berkebun held a gathering for its member to visit Kitchen Garden together, a garden in our city. This activity is aimed to give a reference about an ideal garden for members in order to educate them and expand their knowledge, so, they can develop their own idea and contribute to plan Palembang Berkebun plantation future development. Thus, Kitchen garden was chosen due to its plant diversity, facilities and its aesthetic.

Kitchen garden is a plantation containing various vegetable which are usually cooked in kitchen.  It belongs to PPK association South Sumatera province, an organization that empowers women especially mothers.  There is no further information about this garden since we did not find anyone who is in charge. We just got information from available signs there.  The reason of its establishment is perhaps for persuading mothers to plant organic vegetable by themselves which is good for fulfilling the family nutrition needs.

Impressions? Off course! Everybody will get impressions from a new place that they visit and this place has successful to impress us at first glance. So, let?s move to positive impression!

So far, I believe that the garden is a nice education and refreshing place for people. The garden utilizes various vegetable for being the garden decoration, thus, it makes the visitors amaze with its beautiful. While they indulge themselves on relaxing atmosphere, they can get some information about vegetable consumed every day. People usually have little knowledge about what kind of plants they consume as their meal. Since they get the product in markets and the vegetable plantations are far from their neighborhood. So, the garden can be a facility to inform society especially children and youth for expanding their knowledge, especially in farming.

Another positive impression is the garden atmosphere so persuade us to make our own garden. It is proven by my peer intention to start creating a beautiful vegetable garden at their home yard. The garden is so inspirational. I guess, if there were its official guide, maybe I would ask them the aim of the garden establishment. Why did the PPK association set the garden up? For motivating mothers to do gardening more? Or for conveying a message that planting our own vegetable is better that buying from markets due to unknown pesticide level on the products? Since no one could explain to us, we had to conclude every possibility by ourselves.

Some negative impressions also arrived on our mind due to several unforeseen events happened. At the middle of our observation and exploration, a security office came to us and asked a visit permission letter. Our chief spoke to him that we solely came without any concern to obtain that. Then he asked us to leave immediately as we had trespassed the garden. This made us disappointed even he mentioned that the garden belong to the wife of governor.  Yes, we understood that he only fulfilled his duty but why do not the authority make the garden open to public? If it is only for certain community, why did they establish it in public area? The garden is located on Jakabaring Sport City (JSC), a complex of sports facilities made by the local government to host domestic and international sports even such as SEA Games and next Asian Games 2018. Then, JSC is open to public every day. By these facts, as an average reasonable person, I can conclude that the garden has ambiguous function. Whether it is made for public education or it is only for government show off project. I really wish the latter is only my negative assumption.

In addition to some impressions above, in visit time, we found some ripe vegetable putted on a trash. It hurt us so much. How can the thrash become final destination of ripe products? Yeah, We could not do anything. I hope the owner will consider more about the products. If they do not need them, why do not they give the products to others? This wasting action has been the top rank of our negative impressions list.

As conclusion, despite of its negative conclusion, this place is a perfect place for education and refreshing. The diversity of vegetable is one of the garden magnets for people. Thus, its various vegetable can be good education tools to society. I only hope that the government can manage the garden later and they can concern to utilize the garden potentials only for society interest.