Green Singapore

‘Lane 1 Closed for Pruning’ said the road sign on the way into the city from Changi Airport. You don’t see that on the M4. Despite the horticultural hazards, we arrived safely at our hotel to the unexpected but welcome news that we were entitled to a free dinner on one night of our stay. It was July 2014 and we were passing through on our way to Adelaide, Australia. My friends and colleagues had all looked bemused when I mentioned Adelaide, but  assured me that I would like Singapore.  Being a contrary sort of person, I was fully expecting to hate the place, but the initial indications were certainly looking promising.

For a city with a limited amount of land, Singapore manages to pack in a lot of greenery – even the pedestrian bridges across the busy roads are festooned with plants, and some buildings have a vertical ‘garden’ cladding their walls.

National Orchid Garden

Orchids, the national flower of Singapore, can be seen everywhere, but most notably in the National Orchid Garden. This is the only part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens to have an admission fee, but it is well worth the $5 charge. There are over 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids, all beautifully displayed.   Within the overall Orchid Garden are special gardens for orchids named after visiting dignitaries including Prince William and Nelson Mandela and visiting celebrities. I suspect that many of these celebrity orchids are of interest more as a result of their associations than their horticultural merit, but as I failed to recognise many of the names, their significance was lost on me.

The Orchid Garden is spectacular, but there is far more to the Botanic Gardens than that. I was particularly fascinated by the Ginger garden as I had no idea the family was so large. The Botanic Garden has other surprises.  Symphony Lake is so named because it has a concert stage in it. Also in this lake is the Greenwich arrow, marking the spot where scientists from the Royal Observatory conducted experiments into the Earth's magnetic field.

The Ginger Garden

The new Gardens by the Bay (part of the Marina Bay development), which have won awards for their innovative design, provide a more modern take on the traditional garden.

Like the Botanic Garden, there are a number of different gardens within the site.  These include: the Heritage Gardens (Chinese, Malay and Colonial); the Golden and Silver Gardens; the Children's Garden (with lots of motion-activated water features for children to play with and cool off); the Supertrees - with plants displayed vertically; the Flower Dome (a huge dome containing Mediterranean and subtropical plants) and the Cloud Forest (another huge dome containing highland species such as orchids and pitcher plants). Admission to the site is free, but visitors pay to enter the domes.

Cloud Forest

As we were familiar with Mediterranean flora, we opted to go in the Cloud Forest dome only. This included a man-made mountain and waterfall, with a lift taking visitors to high-level walkways. Being from cooler northern climes, I’m used to thinking of enclosed glasshouses as being warmer and more humid than outside. In Singapore, where the heat and humidity makes it deeply unpleasant to walk for long outside, this was reversed.

A country girl at heart, I always make a point of visiting at least one park or garden in any city. (This once completely bewildered our local guide in Urumqi – but it was his own fault for pointing out the park in the first place). Despite the relative shortage of land, Singapore definitely did not disappoint.