The Singapore Botanic Gardens is a 162-year-old tropical garden, honored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This lovely garden ranks among Asia’s top attractive parks. Spreading out over 200+ acres, this world-famous garden is an ideal place for walking, jogging, or enjoying the sceneries in a natural forest-like environment. Although it locates in the heart of the vibrant Singapore City, you won’t feel it at all.
Visiting Singapore Botanic Gardens is one of the best things we did in Singapore. After enjoying trips to Jurong Bird Park and Universal Studio in Sentosa, we decided to visit Singapore Botanic Gardens. Our day trip to the garden was wonderful and we enjoyed the sight of many plants and flowers we had never seen before. Visiting this gorgeous botanic garden is a truly memorable experience of our expat life in Singapore.
Here we are going to give you a guide to Singapore Botanic Gardens. We would like to show you the details of the park and share the best snaps captured in our lens. Hope this information will help you to plan your trip to Singapore Botanic Gardens well ahead.
Access to Singapore Botanic Gardens
You can easily reach the garden by using the downtown line and alighting at Botanic Gardens MRT station. This station locates quite close to the garden, just at the north edge of the garden.
Attractions of Singapore Botanic Gardens
This garden spreads in a huge area and separates into different zones. Below we have mentioned about most important zones and things you’ll see in each area. You’ll meet this lovely fountain just before starting your journey in the garden.
1. Palm Valley
After the entrance gate, you’ll meet the gorgeous palm valley. In this elegantly landscaped area, many varieties of palm trees have grown. The Palm Valley leads you to a lush green lawn area filled with huge sky-kissing palm trees.
2. Picnic Area
This green lawn is a popular spot for picnics. As well as, this area is famous for outdoor music concerts. You can see this Chopin monument just beside Symphony Lake. If you go there on the weekend, you’ll be able to see the free concerts on this Symphony Stage.
3. National Orchid Garden
Without a doubt, National Orchid Garden is the most striking feature of the Singapore Botanic Garden. It locates within the main gardens. Although the entrance to the garden is free, you need to buy a ticket to enter the orchid garden. This national orchid garden is a pioneer in the cultivation of different varieties and hybrid orchid species.
It houses the largest orchid collection of 1,200 species and 2,000 hybrids. It is one of the most brilliant displays of orchids and hybrids in the whole world, with over 60,000 orchid plants.
We were lucky to witness this amazing phenomenon by ourselves. Everywhere was filled with beautiful bunches of orchid blooms. Simply put, it was like heaven made up with gorgeous colorful orchids.
Here you’ll find Singapore’s national flower, call as Vanda Miss Joaquim. This is a purple and pink hybrid orchid blooms throughout the year. It is a climbing orchid, grown over many spots in the park.
We were amazed by the massive number of orchids in the national orchid garden. They were so colorful and beautiful. We had endless opportunities to capture amazing shots of orchids. Some species were so unique and special, we had never seen before.
When you are visiting the garden, be ready to capture lots of pictures of voluminous bunches of orchids. Definitely, you’ll be dazzled by the vibrant colors available in the national orchid garden.
We captured more than hundreds of lovely shots of colorful orchids, Although it’s difficult to show all the snaps, in this slide show you can see some of the beautiful pictures captured in our lens.
4. VIP Orchid Gardens
VIP orchid garden is a special place, where orchids are dedicated to visiting heads of states, dignitaries, and celebrities. It is a symbol of Singapore’s orchid diplomacy to honor them.
We could see many lovely orchid varieties named after various diplomats around the world. VIP Orchid Gardens displays some finest orchid hybrids named after international dignitaries including Margaret Thatcher, Japanese emperor Akihito, and Queen Elizabeth II.
There is an orchid dedicated to the memory of Princess Diana, as well as Prince William and Kate.
5. Bromeliad Collection
When we were about to enter the bromeliad collection, there was a sudden downpour and fat raindrops splattered the walking trail. We had to wait for some time in a summer hut and luckily it stopped soon.
Bromeliads look like pineapple plants and often have a colorful flower spike. There were lots of bromeliads with beautiful flowers. You can see the plants were completely wet by the sudden downpour.
6. Mist House
The mist house contains a colorful collection of different plants. It shelters the plants that need moisture to grow. It also has a collection of orchids that need a cool environment. We could see an amazing variety of fragrant orchids call as Vanda Mimi Palmer inside the mist house.
7. Cool House
Cool house is used to recreate the environment of a tropical highland forest. There were several plants that grow only in wet rocky areas. They grew very well inside this protected house.
Cool house is the best place to see carnivorous plants like pitcher plants. They use their pitcher with nectar secreting glands to trap insects. There were several kinds of pitcher plants and witnessing these rare plants was an amazing experience.
8. Ginger Garden
Located next to the National Orchid Garden, this one-hectare garden brings together members of the ginger family. We saw there were beautiful flowers in some of the ginger family plants.
9. Heritage Tree
This Tembusu tree calls the heritage Tree is reportedly more than 150 years old. The flowering season of this tree is from May to June and October to November. Its white flowers give off a strong fragrance in the evening. This gives rise to its scientific name, Faraea fragrans – fragrans means sweet-smelling.
10. Swan Lake
We continued to walk passing the swan lake with lovely swans gliding in the water. We could see there were water lily plants on the water. Their huge leaves were floating on the water like giant trays.
11. Tanglin Gate
Tanglin Gate facing Holland Road is the largest of all gates in the garden. This huge, silver gate has an elegant leaf motif on it. It figures high creativity and adds a grand appearance to the park.
We had many pleasurable hours walking around the whole garden. We thoroughly enjoyed the sceneries of lovely flora and fauna in the garden. After completing our day trip, we came out through the Tanglin gate.
Definitely, Singapore Botanic Gardens is one of the top destinations to visit in Singapore. This garden is pretty accessible round the clock between 5 in the morning to midnight, every day for the whole year. You can come for jogging, picnics, walks, or get-togethers any time of the day.
The huge orchid collection in the garden is a joy to behold, which steals the hearts of visitors. The blooms are absolutely exquisite and it’s a definitely worthy sight to witness. Hope you all will enjoy the lovely sceneries of Singapore Botanic Garden someday!
