Gardens by the Bay is, without a doubt, a must-see attraction sight in Singapore. Spanning over 250 acres of reclaimed land, this nature park plays a role in transforming Singapore into a “City in the Garden”. It is a collective park of three waterfront gardens, Bay South Garden, Bay East Garden, and Bay Central Garden, with the south being the biggest at 130 acres.

Bay South Garden is actually designed as an inspiration of the country’s national flower – the orchid. Its roots start at the waterfront (conservatories) and its leaves, shoots, and secondary roots (landforms, paths, roads, communication lines) form a network with blooms (as represented by theme gardens and the supertrees). That said, it comprises of seven different attractions such as the Flower Dome, Cloud Forest, and Supertree Grove, just to name a few.

Since the south is the largest, we spent most of our time exploring the grounds of the three of the seven attractions mentioned above. As for the tickets, we purchased a discounted package from Skyline Travel and Consulting Pte Ltd located in Chinatown Point mall. This was a S$94 (~$91.69 CAD) deal with tickets to Gardens by the Bay in addition to Universal Studios as well as the S.E.A. Aquarium. Their website is mostly in Chinese, but I’ll leave the link ≪here≫ for those interested.

Flower Dome

          Bird of Paradise

The Flower Dome maintains a temperature of 23°C to 25°C and recreates a mild and dry climate to feature plants from the Mediterranean as well as other semi-arid tropical regions. There are seven different sections/gardens as well as an olive garden bistro and one can easily spend at least an hour here admiring exotic flowers.

Cloud Forest 

The “Cloud Mountain” is made up of orchids, ferns, peacock ferns, and various other epiphytes. Unlike the Flower Dome, the Cloud Forest is much cooler and moist, as to imitate the conditions found in the South-East Asian and Middle and South American tropical mountains. Singapore is quite hot and humid, so make an escape down to here for a cold, refreshing afternoon by the waterfall.

Supertree Grove

Supertrees are tree-like structures that consist of unique ferns, vines, orchids, bromeliads, and a collection of other plants. These act as environmental engines for the gardens in a sense that they are equipped with technologies which mimic the ecological function of a tree. They are structured with photovoltaic cells that produce solar energy and they do a bunch of other sciency stuff such as collecting rainwater for irrigation and fountain displays. Sounds complicated and trust me, that was hard my part to summarize so hopefully I got the main gist of things. To put it in simpler terms, supertrees in a nutshell are basically big, fake trees that produce solar energy and look aesthetically pleasing while doing so. You can actually go up the trees too and view the gardens from atop, but it was closed for maintenance hence we were out of luck.

While we are on the topic of the supertrees, right by the Supertree Grove, there is a dining area and we found ourselves at the Hillstreet Coffee Shop for lunch.

I had my first, legit Singaporean laksa and it was phenomenal. I feel like I’ve been using that word so many times in these past couple blog entries, but phenomenal is exactly the right word to describe this bowl of delicious goodness. I don’t remember the exact prices, but each dish was under S$20. We came in the late afternoon so it was fairly empty and we didn’t have to wait for long.

That’s a wrap on Gardens by the Bay and its 250 acres of beauty. Check out my Singapore vlog for more of the gardens from 1:23 to 2:27 and I’ll see you in my next post.