Jack Barnard, Arboricultural Consultant at Wharton, shares his experience of visiting the City in a Garden, Singapore amongst other places on his tour through Asia.
In January 2019, I was given the fantastic opportunity by Wharton to take a 2-month sabbatical, heading off to Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore. Although I could write pages and pages about this trip, I wanted to particularly discuss what I discovered in Singapore.
The first thing that hits you as you get off the plane and enter the Singapore airport is how green everywhere is. Not only are there green walls and water features throughout but there are also semi- and early-mature trees planted in large planting pits throughout the airport, indoors! If you had not just come off a plane, you could certainly be forgiven for thinking you were in a park or recreational area. From a personal perspective this was like a breath of fresh air and you couldn’t help but relax when surrounded by such a Utopian feeling airport.
And this is something that is adopted across the whole city. Trees and greenery are incorporated into everything they do, and this all stems (pun intended) from the people and culture of the city. They seem to have a very different perspective on their public open spaces and green infrastructure, and this is likely a result of their city’s policy and aim of creating a “City in a Garden” (National Geographic 2017).
One of the best examples of this has to be the ‘Gardens by the Bay’. The gardens were opened in 2012 as part of the nation’s plan to transform its "Garden City" to a "City in a Garden". Gardens by the Bay is a nature park spanning just over 100 hectares of reclaimed land in the Central Region of Singapore.
So, when I arrived in Singapore late in the afternoon, I decided to head straight there for the amazing visual display of the gardens at night. No doubt many of you will recall having seen the gardens on the final episode of ‘Planet Earth II’ and therefore won’t need any description to know how stunning the gardens are. For those that don’t, the following images show you the outstanding scenery.
One of the key features of the gardens are the ‘Supertrees’. The man-made mechanical forest consists of 18no. ‘Supertrees’ that act as vertical gardens, generating solar power, acting as air venting ducts for nearby conservatories, and collecting rainwater (Said-Moorhouse, CNN 2015).
Despite having read up A LOT on the gardens, I was still completely blown away by them.
As part of the gardens, there is also the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome. These two vast glass structures host a wide range of plant diversity with large indoor waterfalls and spectacular views. If ever you get the opportunity to head to Singapore, I cannot recommend the Gardens by the Bay highly enough. It is certainly a place I will be revisiting.
For my 30th Birthday, Wharton and the team bought me a night’s stay at the Parkroyal Hotel. For me, the Parkroyal is another stand-out feature of Singapore. Its innovative design, aimed at creating a “hotel-in-a-garden”, is realised through four floors covered with trees, shrubs and green walls. A fact that they are very proud of! The hotel features more than 15,000 square-metres of tiered sky gardens.
The hotel emphasises how the people of Singapore are invested into the city’s philosophy. Setting an example to the rest of the world that not only is sustainability achievable, but when undertaken in this manner, something truly breath-taking can be accomplished.
All this being said, little would you realise that in 1965 Singapore was a far cry from its present-day status. With dirty rivers and polluted canals, Singapore was a developing country that had newly split from neighbouring Malaysia (UNenvironmental 2018). To me, this highlights how quickly things can be changed with the right planning and policy in place. Singapore have identified that they can raise the quality of life by enhancing greenery and flora in the city, and this has rapidly had a drastic effect on their city. This is certainly something that we should be embracing in the UK and looking to take forward with all of our future planning applications. It just begs the question; how can you enhance the natural infrastructure in your planning applications?