Singapore Gardens
Singapore is an island country with a busy airport, and the busiest shipping port in the world. Most travellers come to shop, but not me. My reason was simple - I came to visit the Singapore Botanic Gardens.
Singapore Garden Clock
New Zealand is so far away, embarrassingly stuck at the bottom of the world map. Singapore is for me the ideal stop-over on my journey north to the big land masses of Europe and America.
Singapore Gardens
On my very first morning I took a friendly taxi to the Botanic Gardens, arriving just after nine thirty. I joined a host of other appreciative visitors for a happy, hot three hours, surrounded by tropical plants, flowers and trees.
Meet the Gardens
The early British history of the gardens is well documented - colonial powers like to take all the credit! But the part the Botanic Gardens played in the 'greening' of Singapore into a Garden City campaign, run during early independence years, is even more important.
Now the gardens are rightly a tourist attraction, and soon there will be a train station to make access even easier. New developments like the Evolution Garden add interest to a place already full of wonderful plant-life.
Palm Lawn
There is a rich diversity of visitor tempi - from the adagio of the morning Tai Chi groups to the bustling allegro of red-faced lady joggers. I took up my visiting-a-tropical-country speed - a graceful andante, brow-mopping handkerchief in hand, and went to meet the gardens.
Heliconia Masses
But There's Much, Much More...
This is just my introductory Singapore Botanical Gardens page - click on, to read more and see more photographs...