Gardens in Singapore

Colin Ward from Swines Meadow Nurseries described some of the sights that awaited Karen and he when they visited Singapore recently. They were anxious to visit the Botanical Gardens which had originally been set-up by a Horticultural Society.

Despite the good advice from hotel staff to take a taxi, they decided to walk instead. After walking only a short way they quickly realised what an advantage a 30C temperature and high humidity climate was for the growing of plants. It was a place where you could simply drop seeds anywhere and just watch them grow.

The building architecture took full use of plants growing on them (see above picture) as not only does it soften concrete with nature, but also provided a means of reducing airborne pollution. Colin’s quite breath taking photos included a video of a 3ft long monitor lizard which are very common there. They are perfectly safe to look at but if you attempt a “Selfie” with them they can bite you and infect you with toxins which can result in quite a long and considerably painful death.

The highlight was the Botanical Gardens themselves which had a skyway walk you could use when there was minimal chance of a lightening strike and were hung from growing towers that were lit up with pulsating music every night. The gardens had two domes one of which housed an olive vine which was about 1,500 years old.