Herb garden produces edible plants for resort
KOTA KINABALU: Not many know that Shangri-La Tanjung Aru has its own herb garden that produces edible flowers and herbs for the resort’s kitchens.
Located opposite the guest car park, this little plot of land is home to about 40 types of herbs and flowers including basil, lemongrass, rosemary, thyme, stevia and torch ginger to name a few.
The herb garden is also the office of the resort’s Landscaping Service Manager Su Mon Fong, who spends her morning tending to the plants there.
And on Wednesday mornings, Su will conduct a tour of the herb garden for the resort’s guests, guiding and introducing them to the herbs and plants through smell and taste.
The arborist from Beaufort said the garden can provide up to 50kg of herbs and flowers for the resort’s kitchens a month which results in savings of approximately RM1,000.
She added that from the resort’s kitchens, they get fruit and vegetable peels for composting and making enzymes to be used as insecticide.
The kitchen also sends eggshells to them to be made into fertilizer, Su added.
By successfully regenerating the herb garden at the resort, the butterfly population has increased and Su and her team have successfully introduced kelulut (stingless) bees to the herb garden.
“The bees have taken up residence at the garden, feeding on the flora and pollinating the plants while producing kelulut honey for our guests,” Su said.
Kelulut honey is known to have better antioxidant capacity, anti-inflammatory effects, and free radical scavenging activity than other local honey, and also possesses similar pro-healing properties as other kinds of honey.
Shangri-La Tanjung Aru, recently received the prestigious Asean Green Hotel Standard award from the Asean Tourism Forum 2024 (ATF) held in Vientiane, Lao PDR.
The award was given in recognition of the resort’s sustainable tourism practices.
Shangri-La Tanjung Aru, Kota Kinabalu is Sabah’s premier beach resort and is recognised as the market leader in the state’s tourism industry with its outstanding employee care packages, continued financial achievements and sustainable environmental practices that have been recognised since 2000 when the resort was first awarded the international ISO14001 certification.
Its green practices include a water aerator in washbasin taps in every guestroom, reusable glass bottles for storing drinking water, filtered in the resort’s own bottling plant, airconditioning automatically turns off in the guestrooms when the room balcony doors are open, a note for guests to actively participate in reusing bed linens, and more.
In the general areas of the resort, a food waste monitoring system to avoid oversupply of food has been implemented and the resort also aims to have zero single-use plastic in the resort by 2025.