On the afternoon of my third day in Singapore I visited Gardens in the Bay. This is a sort of ‘hi-tech eco paradise’ – or at least, that’s how it’s intended.If you know the Eden Project in Cornwall you’ll get the idea, but with added technology.
Update: here’s the text! Gardens by the Bay consists of three broad areas. First there are acres of ‘walk around’ areas, laid out in gardens. For example, there’s the Chinese garden, the Malay garden, and so on. There are also large areas of open grassland. In fact this area is pretty much like a botanic gardens, and is also free to enter. The second area are the two domes – the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest, and they’re not free. These are both enclosed and controlled environments. The Flower Dome contains flowers and other plants from the several Mediterranean climatic environments around the world – California, South Africa, Chile, and of course from around the Med itself. This is interesting enough, but (unless you’re a plant enthusiast) not exactly spectacular. It’s saved, however, by the presence of additional ‘exhibition’ displays, and when I was here they had displays of cherry blossoms. These were very popular, with queues of people being photographed beside and among the blossoms. I took some images of this blossom myself – examples below.
Then there’s the Cloud Forest dome. This is an artificial reconstruction (and explanation) of the way vegetation on a mountain is stratified by the climate that is present at a given altitude. So particular species of plant will only exist on the mountain within a fairly narrow range – no lower than a certain height, and no higher than a certain other height. For this example they’ve picked plants that thrive in the ‘cloud zone’ – temperate climate (in fact blissfully cool) and with plentiful moisture, mainly from the clouds that form around the mountain at the relevant altitude.
In the case of the Flower Dome you just walk around the floor of the dome, but it’s a bit different for the Cloud Forest dome. There’s an artificial mountain, some tens of metres high, with plants growing all the way up it. I gather that in fact these plants are zoned – that the climate isn’t constant throughout the dome – but I didn’t really spot any great difference. But having marvelled from the ground at it all, you then get to ascend by lift to the fifth or 6th floor, from where you walk down. Some of these walks, as you can see from the images below, extend out from the ‘mountain’ by many yards. Presumably so you can appreciate the thing in all its glory, I expect – certainly not just to give the visitors a thrill! Basically you gradually descend round and round the mountain, sometimes passing through it, sometimes on a walkway out in the air, until you reach the bottom.
But that’s not all! I said that it replicates moist conditions. So how can they do that in an enclosed dome in equatorial Singapore? Well, every couple of hours or thereabouts they ‘mist’ the mountain – hundreds of tiny vents issue a fine spray or mist of water which moisturises the plants. Of course it looks spectacular (again, see a couple of the images below) but I’m sure that’s just a happy accident.
First, in the Cloud Forest and Flower domes:
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Cherry blossom
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Part of the mountain from the ground
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Just a pretty tree
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Misting the Cloud Forest
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The Cloud Forest being misted
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Truly weird sculptures – most of their bodies are missing….
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Plants on the ‘mountain’ in the Cloud Forest
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Cherry blossom
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Plants on the ‘mountain’ in the Cloud Forest
The next spectacular area of the Gardens is the Supertree Grove, together with the associated Skyway (there’s an extra charge for this). The Supertrees themselves are between 25 and 50 metres high, and actually perform engineering functions for the park – e.g. as air exhaust outlets for the cooled conservatories. They’re each made up of a concrete core; a steel frame exoskeleton; and onto that are fixed millions of plants. The Skyway is a 138 metre walk between two of the medium-height trees.
I enjoyed the afternoon I spent there. To be honest, I think that unless you were interested in horticulture or botany much of the open gardens might be a bit ‘blah’. But the two conservatories are amazing, especially the Cloud Forest, and the Supertree Grove is just one of those ridiculous things that’s actually wonderful.
I gather that at night they illuminate the Supertrees…. maybe next visit.
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