Botanic Garden [Singapore 2018]

An early excursion was to the Singapore Botanic Garden, the first and only tropical garden to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and also home to the National Orchid Garden. So yes, this post is partially an excuse to show off orchid pictures. I hauled my nice camera across the ocean as my personal item on the plane, and I don’t regret it at all.

At 202 acres, the Botanic Garden is larger than both Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan (123 acres), and the Newman Arboretum (150 acres) at Cornell. Similarly to both arboretums, the Botanic Garden contains a variety of different areas, including several lakes (one with a stage for performances in the middle of it), a rainforest, Ginger Garden, Sundial Garden, Children’s Garden, and the Orchid Garden. It’s large (and hot) enough that most areas aren’t crowded; the highest concentration of people can be found at the Orchid Garden.

Swan Lake

When we visited, we started out by Swan Lake, a body of water featuring bird statues, and continued across the lawn to see some big trees. At that point, my cousin’s kids wanted to go play, so my mother and I split off from my aunt and the aforementioned children to go see the Ginger Garden. The Ginger Garden contains over 250 species of ginger. As someone who can tell the difference between a rose and a dandelion, I can say with confidence that the Ginger Garden contained many plants.

Trees, plant, plant, and plant

We reconvened with my aunt/niece/nephew outside the Orchid Garden. To allow us to spend more than 0.1 seconds looking at each orchid, we arranged to meet up with them again after going through the Orchid Garden. Even if you don’t fully comprehend the horticulture required to breed/grow/cultivate orchids, the sheer scale of this garden is impressive. There are thousands of orchids from dozens of different varietals/hybrids in all sorts of shades of red, orange, yellow, pink, and purple. Kind of like how the peony garden at the University of Michigan arboretum blooming every June is a Big Deal, the orchid garden is a Big Deal, except year round.

Orchids