Singapore Botanic Garden and National Orchid Garden Tour

We all know that Singapore offers a lot of tourist attractions, but there’s one that made my trip more colorful and memorable. Pretty flowers, exotic blooms, and fresh air will surely bring out the love of nature in you. Experience it too by visiting Singapore Botanic Garden.

Singapore Botanic Garden History

The garden was founded on its present site by an agri-horticultural society in 1859. It played a huge part on the boom of rubber trade centuries ago as it facilitated the perfection on the technique of rubber extraction.

Singapore Botanic Garden is the only tropical garden honored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It also bagged awards from Tripadvisor and received Michelin’s three-star rating.

As you can see in our photos, there are a very wide variety of plants and flowers around. In fact, more than 10,000 species of flora can be seen in its vast area of 82 hectares. You would want to walk around in the afternoon to avoid being baked under the sun while walking hundreds of meters. The longest distance on north and south ends is about 2.5 kilometers.

For free, you can visit this beautiful garden starting at 5 am in the morning until 12 midnight. There are numerous entrances since it’s located at the center of the city, but we went in via Bukit Timah Gate since the Botanic Gardens MRT Station (Circle Line & Downtown Line) is the one who lead us here.

The place surely is big on the paper but it’s larger than we expected. Despite having a map given by an auntie at the entrance for free, we sought help from Google maps as we roam around so we can follow the path correctly.

National Orchid Garden

The auntie at the entrance advised us to visit the garden’s main attraction — National Orchid Garden. For a small entrance fee of SGD 5, you can enjoy sprawling land of around 3 hectares of a thousand species of orchids as well as 2,000 hybrids.

You will be welcomed by a fountain with different kinds of orchids on it. This inviting scene will give you a jump-start for a long but lovely walk around the garden. It has a number of attractions such as:

Burkill Hall
VIP Orchid Garden
Orchidarium
Tan Hoon Siang Misthouse
Lady Yuen-Peng McNeice Bromeliad House
Coolhouse

But since our visit to this one-of-a-kind Singapore tourist attraction was not well planned, there were sections that we skipped as we walked ang got ourselves hooked by the beauty of nature around. One I remembered is the Burkill Hall and VIP orchid garden where the finest hybrids of orchid are named after celebrities, dignitaries and head of states. Some notable names are Princess Diana, former South African President Nelson Mandela and our own former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Here are some Instagrammable arches made of flora. Nice blooming yellow flowers, isn’t it? In some areas, orchids are arranged in an accurate and geometrical way. It’s a sign of how well the garden is maintained and cultured.

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How to Go?

The garden is located in central Singapore making it very accessible to everyone. There are four gates where you may enter/exit: Tanglin Gate, Tyersall Gate, Nassim Gate and Bukit Timah Gate. But among them, we only saw Bukit Timah, our entry point and Tanglin, our exit point. The former is new with its white paint and modern design.

By Train:

Board Circle Line & Downtown Line and alight at Botanic Gardens MRT Station.

By Bus:

Alight at Napier Road via SBS Transit 7, 105, 123, 174,174e
also SMRT 75, 77, 106, NR8

You can also hire taxi but that costs more than riding the train/bus.

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Tips:

Wear light and breathable clothing. In our case, we toured from 12:30 noon until 3:30 in the afternoon and the sun was beaming hard.
Bring water. Walking for hours will surely drain you, so stay hydrated. There are drinking fountains if you need to refill. We found one near exit gate.
Insect repellent is recommended.
Allot a couple of hours. The gardens are so big. We haven’t explored them completely as it would require much time and energy.
Plan your entry and exit points. We found it the hard way. Walking and figuring our way out drained our strength. So it’s better to plot them first specially if you’ll be utilizing the train / bus.

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Here’s a map for your ready reference:

Singapore Botanic Gardens

Address: 1 Cluny Road, Singapore 259569, Singapore
Operating hours: 5 am to 12 mn
Entrance Fee / Admission:
Botanic Gardens = FREE, National Orchid Garden = SGD 5, Senior/Student = SGD 1, Children below 12 = FREE
Website: https://www.sbg.org.sg/