Singapore Botanic Gardens Becomes the Country’s First World Heritage Site

The World Heritage Committee inscribed the Singapore Botanic Gardens on the World Heritage List on 4 July 2015, at its 39th session in Bonn. It is the first World Heritage site in Singapore and the first tropical botanic garden on the list. The only botanic gardens listed before it were those at Padua and at Kew.

A colonial garden

The gardens were founded in 1859 by an agricultural and horticultural society on a site at Tanglin, at the edge of the town. The layout, by Lawrence Niven, followed the English landscape style, with curving paths, lawns, a bandstand hill and a lake. Swan Lake was dug in 1866. The colonial government took the gardens over in 1874, and they became a scientific institution on the model of Kew.

Their most important work concerned rubber. The first seedlings arrived from Kew in 1877. Henry Ridley, director from 1888 to 1911, developed a way of tapping the trees without killing them and spent years persuading planters to grow them. Rubber went on to become one of the main commodities of the Malay peninsula, and the plantations of the region trace their origin to these grounds.

The gardens later led the breeding of orchid hybrids, which became an industry of its own. Vanda Miss Joaquim, a hybrid first recorded in Singapore, was chosen as the national flower in 1981.

What was listed

The inscribed area covers 49 hectares. It includes the historic landscape, a number of colonial buildings such as Burkill Hall of 1868, a collection of old trees and a six-hectare remnant of the original rainforest of the island, which holds more than 300 species of plants. UNESCO recognised the gardens as an outstanding example of a British tropical colonial botanic garden and for their role in the exchange of plants and scientific knowledge.

For travellers

Entry to the gardens is free, and they open from early morning until late at night. Only the National Orchid Garden, which holds a very large collection of orchid species and hybrids, charges admission. The Botanic Gardens MRT station is at the Bukit Timah gate, and the older part of the gardens is at the Tanglin end, a short distance from Orchard Road. The grounds stretch for about two and a half kilometres, and a walk from one end to the other takes a leisurely morning.

The gardens are at their most pleasant early, when residents come to walk and practise tai chi. Singapore’s other landmark of recent years, the National Gallery, is due to open later in 2015 in the former City Hall and Supreme Court.