Singapore Botanic Gardens

Add to Trip
1 Cluny Road
Singapore, Singapore 259569
+65 6471 7361 Website
Not quite right? Change Photo Update Address

ahazan: First Reviewer

5 out of 5: Avg. Member Rating

2: Reviews

12: Photos

Sort by: Most Recent|Positive|Negative|Most Useful: 1-2 of 2

Empress Orchid

March 11, 2009
Rated 5 of 5 by SeenThat from Tel Aviv, Israel

Ancient Orchids

Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, established the first botanical garden on Government Hill in 1822, aiming to introduce the cultivation of cocoa and nutmeg. This garden was closed in 1829, after his death.

The actual gardens were founded in 1859 as a leisure and ornamental park. Its first Director, Henry Nicholas Ridley, arrived in 1888 and is known for persisting in persuading Malaya's planters to grow rubber trees. He devised successful propagation methods and discovered a way to harvest the rubber without harming the trees. After Malaya’s coffee plantations were destroyed by disease, the planters adopted the rubber just in time for the rubber rush driven by the then new car industry.

Beginning in 1928, Professor Eric Holttum, then Director of the Gardens, set up laboratories and conducted the first experiments in orchid breeding and hybridization. The results of these experiments laid the foundation for this industry. Since the mid 1960s, the gardens supply plants and flowers for the roadsides and parks of Singapore.

In 1988, the 3-hectares National Orchid Garden was established and the gardens experienced a shift towards becoming a leading institution for tropical botany, including topics like botanical research, education programs and preservation of cultural heritage.

Access

The gardens are open everyday from 5 AM to midnight, the entrance is free. The National Orchid Garden is open between 8:30 AM and 7 PM daily, with tickets (Adults $5.00, discount tickets are available) sold until 6 PM. The Jacob Ballas Children's Garden is open between 8 AM and 7 PM (Admission until 6:30 PM, closed on Mondays)

The Library of Botany and Horticulture is open from Monday to Friday, between 9 AM and 5 PM, and on weekends from 9 AM to 1 PM.

By Foot

The gardens are near Orchard Road. Keep going until its northern end, and then continue along Tanglin Road. Soon the last changes its name to Napier Road. At the spot where Napier Road changes its name to Holland Road is the Tanglin Gate of the park.

By Bus

From Holland Road
SBS Transit 7, 105, 123, 174
SMRT 75, 77, 106

From Bukit Timah Road
SBS Transit 66, 151, 153, 154
SMRT 67, 171

Walking Considerations

The park is huge; if arriving on a tight schedule the walking distances among the main attractions should be considered.

Walking from the Visitor Centre to the Orchid Garden takes around ten minutes; from the Visitor Centre to the Eco-lake and the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden takes around fifteen minutes.

Then, walking from the Orchid Garden to the Botany Centre takes fifteen minutes and from the last to the Visitor Centre (the starting point) takes twenty-five minutes.

Empress Orchid

The park is divided into the following areas:

Tanglin Core

Tanglin Core is the name of the area next to the Tanglin Gate; it includes the Botanic Center and the Swan Lake as main attractions. Beyond that, an extensive array of lush paths leads among sculptures and six main exhibits.

The Botanic Centre includes the Library of Botany & Horticulture, the Singapore Herbarium, the Orchid Breeding & Micro-propagation center as well as the Education Outreach and Workshop classrooms

The most notorious among them is the Tembusu tree, a very large tree with a dark brown, cracked bark; it is part of the Heritage Trees Scheme, which is aimed to save native trees from extinction.

Central Core

The Central Core occupies the park center and provides access to the Nassim Gate; the Visitor Centre is located not far from that gate. Its main attractions are the Symphony Lake, the Rainforest, the Palm Valley, and the Ginger Garden, where the Halia Restaurant is.

However, its main attraction is the National Orchid Garden.

I must admit I had hardly paid any attention to that flower until I visited this garden. Its magnificent display of color and life is impossible to ignore.

The garden’s collection includes more than a thousand species and two-thousand hybrids of orchids.

It is divided into several areas:

The Burkill Hall & VIP Orchid Garden is a colonial plantation bungalow; it used to be the Director’s House and currently its ground level serves as an exhibition area of orchid hybrids named after VIPs who have visited the garden. Next to it is the VIP Orchid Garden where those are grown; some famous hybrids include: Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher, Renantanda Akihito, Dendrobium Masako Kotaishi Hidenka, Dendrobium Elizabeth, and others.

The Orchidarium is an area where only natural orchids are on display. The Tan Hoon Siang Misthouse displays hybrids and a small collection of fragrant orchids, like the Vanda Mimi Plamer. Finally, the Lady Yuen-Peng McNeice Bromeliad House houses plants of the Bromeliaceae family, which includes plants like pineapples.

In temperate countries there are hothouses; hot Singapore needs a coolhouse for growing certain plants. The one located here recreates the environment of a tropical highland forest, and shows orchids growing only there.

Bukit Timah Core

The Bukit Timah Core is on one of the park corners, next to the Nursery Gate. It features the Eco-Lake, the Bamboos, the Bougainvillea, a garden of herbs and spices, medicinal plants, fruit trees, nuts and beverage crops and the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden.

Heritage Trees Scheme

Walking in the 21st century Singapore is misleading; it is easy for the traveler to forget he is in a tropical island where the rainforest ruled a couple of centuries ago. Thus a plan to keep native trees was implemented in 2001, including eleven trees in the gardens; several of them belong to the rainforest.

The rainforest area of the gardens occupies six hectares and offers a golden opportunity to see how Singapore looked before the city was founded, with attractive trails among an original forest which is kept almost untouched. Few cities have such an attraction and since seeing a well-preserved rainforest in the wildness is difficult this is with no doubt one of the peaks of a trip to Singapore.

From journal Singapore's Singas