Botanical Gardens - the best thing about the gardens

Why go there? It's fun and it's free, good for exercise and gourmets, solos and couples, and families, dog lovers, and people who want to park the car. 

It's the world's most visited Botanic Garden, beating Kew Gardens in London and others in the USA and Canada. Most of it is free and open from 5 am until midnight. A couple of great shops sell souvenirs, whether you are into fashion such as orchid brooches, silk scarves and sundresses, tee-shirts and sunhats, or books about plants and plants.

It's a Unesco World Heritage site, attracting four million visits a year. 

Problem
Where can we take a foreign visitor to visit? In Singapore the Gardens by the Bay are expensive and we leave that to the last day when we have time to spend all day there. For a mere afternoon jaunt which can be cut short with no financial loss if our visitor grows tired, we follow her own request to visit the Botanical Gardens.

Symphony Lake. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

You can approach the Botanical gardens from various directions. On the MRT you arrive underneath and enter a gateway with many plaques and pictures to read.

This time we took a taxi. Our entry point was at the entrance with a souvenir shop and map. We walked from the cacti garden and the orchid garden past the bandstand and out to the roadway.

Highlights:
the souvenir shops
the waterfall you can walk behind
the bandstand in the water
the two white swans

Symphony Lake. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Swans mate for life, but woe betide you if you get between them and their young. The strength of a swan's wings is famous. Those graceful necks are strong as a forearm and can strike you hard. Admire from afar. to take pictures you might like to invest in a telephone lens for a camera or even a mobile phone.

Who goes to the Botanical Gardens?

Shopaholics looking for fashionable, colourful hats and scarves and jewellery.
Plant lovers, looking for kits to grow.

Dog walkers with dogs on leads following the paths.

Energetic joggers running along amidst pleasant scenery far away from the car fumes of the streets, out in the fresh air. Some are singles. Others in groups. I joked:'They look like they are running for a bus!'

Relaxation-lovers sit on the many rustic chairs, rocks, walls and lawns.

Romantic couples stroll hand in hand.

Families with toddlers.

Grannies and people pushing grannies and grandads in wheelchairs.

Photographers after scenery and wildlife.


Photographers after romantic settings for girlfriends, or models.

Couples looking for either wide open spaces or privacy.

Best of all, it's free. So you can spend as much or as little as you like, in terms of money and time.

GETTING THERE AND GETTING AWAY
By car or cab.
1 We arrived via Cluny Road. Confusingly you have to turn the map sideways to get north at the top.
My favourite entrance is Botanic Gardens MRT. However, it's quite walk from one end to the other.

If short of time, take a taxi to Cluny Road and walk the half which ends at
2 By car or cab
Tanglin Gate (Napier Road)where you can call a cab.

3 By MRT /train or bus
My favourite entrance is Botanic Gardens MRT. It is on the Circle Line and the Downtown Line. (However this entrance is at the south end and it's quite a walk from one end to the other at Tanglin Gate.)
More details from the Botanic Gardens website.

For me the highlights were:
1 Symphony Lake with Shaw Foundation Symphony Stage. (Roughly in the middle)
2 The walk behind the waterfall near Halia restaurant and the ginger garden. (Halia means ginger.)

USEFUL WEBSITES
www.sbg.org.sg
Singapore Airlines
singaporeair.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

The Botanical Gardens - for weddings and information on trees and plants

Earlier this year (2016) I went to a wedding at the Botanical Gardens. I arrived by car and then walked a short distance to the Halia restaurant, which was wonderful for a wedding reception. (See my previous post.)

Tree mural at Botanical Gardens station. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

When a friend collected me by car from outside the Botanical Gardens MRT (underground railway) I discovered that the entrance to the Botanical Gardens is right next to the MRT, served by several buses, on the well known Bukit Timah road running out of the city and currently has display boards showing photos of notable trees all over Singapore by a featured Singapore photographer.

Gardens By The Bay

http://www.todayonline.com/lifestyle/travel/five-things-say-sound-cherry-blossom-expert
(I'll add photos to this post later.)

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Halia restaurant, Botanic Gardens, Singapore

the Botanic Gardens are a delight, with trees bearing plaques and a white bandstand for weddings.

Inside the restaurant is very elegant. White and glass and mirrors and glimpses of the greenery outside.

Ginger drink and ginger dessert - Halia is heavenly. H a l i a means ginger - and ginger flavours are a feature of their menu. Walking from the car park up the pedestrian only path to the restaurant you pass trees with plaques. We went to a wedding where the ceremony was booked to be performed in the bandstand out in the gardens.

Ginger was a flavour of the cocktail we were served in the restaurant lobby area whilst waiting for the start of the ceremony. Ginger and lemon grass. I've often asked for a drink supposedly flavoured with lemon grass and it did not taste of anything. But here the lemon grass and ginger flavours were zinging.

The pumpkin soup was lovely flavour and consistency. (A few days later I had pumpkin soup at another restaurant, the Amarone, where it was not nearly so good.)

The service was superb. The wedding guests' placards were market with red dots if the diner had ordered meat, blue for fish. My salmon was moist, succulent.

The highlight of the meal was the dessert, a kind of crunch meringue with nuts and fruit flavoured cream.

The shape of the hall was in two parts, like an L shape and a screen in the larger room showed what was happening at the top table in the smaller room. If you were not at a wedding but having a lunch that would not bother you.

Afterwards we wanted to go back so I looked at the set meal on line. They offered a two course or three course set meal, 28 or 32 dollars, so near in price that you might as well have the three courses. The price includes tea or coffee. But they will add on ten percent service charge plus the 7% GST (tax).

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.