Singapore Botanic Gardens and the National Orchid Garden
A tropical garden with more than 160 years of history, a lake full of swans, a patch of old rainforest and the world's most famous orchid collection.
- Area
- Green Singapore
- Start from
- Botanic Gardens MRT or Orchard Road
- Distance
- about 4–5 km on foot through the gardens
- Time needed
- half a day
- Best season
- All year; early morning is coolest and quietest
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Transport
- MRT to Botanic Gardens (Circle and Downtown lines) or Napier on the Thomson-East Coast line
- Tickets & rules
- Free entry to the gardens; small ticket for the National Orchid Garden
Why go
The Botanic Gardens are where I go to slow down. They open very early and close late, and in the first hours after dawn they belong to joggers, tai chi groups and families walking with their grandparents. The paths wind through great lawns, under enormous rain trees, past lakes and small bandstands, and the air smells of cut grass and wet earth.
The highlight for most visitors is the National Orchid Garden, a sloping garden of thousands of orchids in every imaginable colour, displayed on arches, in beds and in a cool house that recreates a highland forest. Among them are the 'VIP orchids', hybrids named after heads of state, celebrities and royalty who have visited Singapore.
But I love the quieter corners just as much: the small rainforest that survives in the middle of the gardens, older than the gardens themselves, the ginger garden with its waterfall, and the Swan Lake where black and white swans glide past. It is a garden to wander rather than to tick off.
The story
The gardens were founded in 1859 by an agri-horticultural society and later passed to the colonial government. Their real importance came under the director Henry Ridley, who arrived in 1888 and became obsessed with rubber. He developed a method of tapping rubber trees without killing them and urged planters across Malaya to grow them; people called him 'Mad Ridley', but the rubber boom that followed transformed the economy of the whole region.
Orchid breeding began here in the 1920s, and Singapore has been producing new hybrids ever since. The national flower, Vanda Miss Joaquim, is a natural hybrid named after Agnes Joaquim, an Armenian woman who lived in Singapore and is said to have found or bred it in her garden in the 1890s.
In 2015 the Singapore Botanic Gardens became the country's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as an outstanding example of a British tropical colonial botanic garden that grew into a modern scientific institution. It remains a working research garden, with a herbarium holding hundreds of thousands of dried plant specimens.
The small rainforest in the gardens is a reminder of what most of the island once looked like. Some of its trees are very tall and very old, and walking under them on a raised boardwalk on a hot day, you feel the temperature drop and hear birds and cicadas above the traffic.
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Getting there
Botanic Gardens MRT station is at the northern end of the gardens. From Orchard Road you can walk or take a bus to the Tanglin Gate at the southern end. Napier MRT on the Thomson-East Coast line is also close to the Tanglin side.
It is a long, narrow park; walking from one end to the other and catching the MRT at the opposite end works well.
A suggested plan
- 7:00 amEnter at the Tanglin Gate and walk past the bandstand and Swan Lake while it is still cool.
- 8:00 amWalk through the rainforest boardwalk.
- 8:30 amNational Orchid Garden when it opens; allow at least an hour.
- 10:00 amGinger garden and a coffee at one of the cafés in the gardens.
- 11:00 amContinue north past the Eco-Lake to Botanic Gardens MRT.
Where to stay
The Orchard Road and Tanglin area is the closest, with many hotels, though most are expensive. Any base on the Circle or Downtown line gives easy access.
Good to know
- Go early in the morning, when the light is soft and the orchids are fresh.
- Free guided walks are run on some weekends; check the gardens' website.
- Free concerts are sometimes held at the Shaw Foundation Symphony Stage.
- The children's garden at the north end is excellent if you travel with kids.
- Mosquitoes can be active in the rainforest and near the lakes; use repellent.
- Lightning storms come quickly; leave open lawns when they start.
- Do not pick flowers or feed animals; the gardens are strictly protected.