Malayan Banyan, Tanglin Trust SchoolBrian Teng Kok Seng, 42, director of operations at Tanglin Trust SchoolHow this tree, located at Tanglin Trust School, came to be its current size and location is an interestingstory about student activism. This tree was originally part of a larger, sprawling banyan tree thatsheltered generations of students in the school. It was slated to be removed in 2008 to make way for anew building. According to former student Danielle Guy, the project was not widely publicised. After shegot wind of the decision, she went to the headmaster with photographic documentation, including pagesin past yearbooks, to emphasise the tree’s place in the school’s heritage and community. This later ledto a peaceful and powerful student protest that convinced the school to put the felling on hold.Meanwhile, experts from the Nature Society were engaged to conduct a survey on the ecological valueof the tree, which was 57m by 23m, and reached a height of eight storeys. They found that it was likelyto have pre-dated the establishment of Portsdown Road as a British Military area during the 1950s.Brian Teng, project director of the new school building, also recalls receiving emails from alumnimembers that shared stories of how they used to play under the tree in their school days.Eventually, the school decided to shift the mother tree, its oldest part, 60m from its original location, toallow for the expansion of the school while saving the tree. Mr Teng said that after the tree was hoistedout of the ground, it was left on its side for three days to allow animals to move out. During that period,they saw the variety of animals that used to live in the tree, including squirrels, king cobras, frogs and a30cm long centipede. The transplanted tree now occupies approximately 20m 2 , a far cry from its original120m 2 floor area.To prevent the tree’s roots from interfering with the foundation of the new building after itstransplantation, a 2m thick concrete wall was built underground around the tree’s root system. Whilesome of the smaller 15 banyan trees that weren’t transplanted were relocated outside another schoolgate, others have been made into stools.One line at the back of postcard :No.5Transplanted Malayan Banyan, Tanglin Trust School
