I've just watched the final episode of the BBC's documentary, Around the World in 80 Gardens - South East Asia: Bangkok, Singapore and Bali (available on the BBC iPlayer for a week) and it was agonizing.

Monty Don, the BBC's gardening guru, secured an interview with MM Lee who was described as the Master Gardener. When asked what inspired him to make Singapore a city in a garden, the alarmingly aged and wispy haired Minister Mentor said that he had found Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok to be hideous, awful concrete jungles. He paused. And then said that he probably shouldn't say these things in public. Oh dear.

NParks also sent Monty a horrendously cheesy coffee table book, The Tale of the Magical Seeds, which does all those things that Alfian Sa'at rages against in his 2001 anthology, A History of Amnesia, which presents Singapore's history prior to 1819 as a tabula rosa, erasing the deep roots of this island's Indo-Malay heritage. To his credit, Monty managed to read through the book with a straight face and voice, without sounding smug, patronizing or condescending, instead it was the cartoon 'history' that came across as smug, patronizing and condescending of our human and natural history.

Later Monty did make it clear that he found Singapore's gardens to be beautiful, neat, tidy and well-planned, but he admitted to being disturbed by the pervasiveness of the state and the corporation in our landscape (Bishan Park and Shangri La Hotel respectively) and described it as 'soulless'.

Monty did heap unreserved praise on a HDB community garden project led by Wilson Wong; he was excited by how passionate young people took action, organized, obtained resources and actually did something rather than just comprain. However the final shot showed the community garden's official opening plague by Mrs Lim Hwee Hua; I'm not certain that Monty realized that the party-state is probably deeply involved in the project through NParks and various PAP controlled grassroots organizations like the Residents' Committee.

Of course, none of this should detract from the fact that young people like Wilson have managed to tap resources from the gahmen apparatus and the party-state's patronage networks (nod to dansong) to do something worthwhile for his fellow Singaporeans. Which is much much more than I've done.

It was an agonizing program to watch because while Monty made some valid points and comments, I was also asking who was he to pronounce judgment on us if Singaporeans derive real enjoyment and benefit. Given the brief whistle stop nature of his visit, he both under-estimated the extent of the party-state's gardening hand (e.g. in the community garden) but also over-estimated it.

If he had scratched beneath the surface, he would have discovered the daily dramas of HDB void deck hanging gardens where neighbours could be doing their own thing or helping to look after each other's plants or disputing over territorial spaces. Or the vitality and diversity of the local gardening trade with Singaporeans buying bags of black Indonesian volcanic soil, chicken manure fertilizer from Malaysia, tree saplings, flowers, shrubs from all over the world.

There are still spaces where the totalitarian ambition, as termed by Yao Souchou, of the party-state has yet to be fulfilled. Long may that continue to be so.