Amazing Singapore Part 2

He who plants a tree, plants hope. (Anonymous)

Upon sending my e-mail inquiry, the Singapore Botanical Garden (SBG) replied almost immediately "Greetings from the Singapore Botanic Gardens and thank you for writing to us. The distance between Bukit Timah Gate and Tanglin Gate is approximately 2.3 km if you follow the blue dotted route marked in the attached map.” I was impressed with the speed and sincerity of the reply. The dotted line is a meandering road inside the garden. If a straight diagonal line is drawn, I figured it was about a 2 km stretch between north and south ends of the park. The Bukit Timah (tin hill in English) Road runs into the north gate and the MRT stop and is the longest road running from north to south of the island.

The Bukit Timah pamphlet I picked up at the old Ford Motor factory, the historic surrender site of the British to Japan (my host drove me there on the 4th day), offers quite a lot of information. The 163 meter Bukit Timah Hill is the highest point in Singapore and it was where the Shonan Shrine was built. Today the area is a nature reserve along with the neighboring Bukit Batok Nature Reserve.

One of my hobbies is to visit old trees. I visited many exceptional trees - redwood, sequoia and Moreton Bay Fig in California and others in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan. The Bukit Timah pamphlet read: "The number of plant species growing in the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is more than in the whole of North America and at the same time, Singapore's oldest tree, a 400 year-old Seriya Shorea curtisii Tree is also found here. This tree is possibly the Temak tree that gave Bukit Timah its name."

My visit to SBG was through the Nassim Main Gate, mid-point on the east-side right by a taxi stand where the sightseeing bus stops, and near the Visitor Center and National Parks Board Headquarter. Luckily I got the "Tall Tales book" at the visitor center that had the well documented heritage trees trail guide. There are about 30 numbered trees and I just followed the directions. The names were new to me. They are Temak, Kapok (National Tree of Puerto Rico), Saya, Jelaw (47 meters tall, currently the tallest tree at SGB. common in Malaysia) and "Tembusu." Tembusu is a distinctive tree to Singapore, not found in Malaysia. The tree is featured as part of the Garden City on the back of SG 5 dollar note. (See photo). I know the orchid is the national flower of Singapore but decided to forego seeing the flowers for more exploration of trees of palm valley, around the lakes, with fancy names like Swan and Symphony.

There's one more tree I loved at SGB - the Senegal Mahogany. On June 1963, Lee Kuan Yew, the Father of Singapore, launched a national tree planting campaign. It marked the beginning of five decades of greening efforts that have built Singapore's reputation as a city in the garden. To commemorate Tree Planting Day on November 2, 1980, he took a hoe himself and planted a Senegal Mahogany Heritage Tree. I was seeing it 35 years after Mr. Yew's planting. It grew to be a huge tree.

I managed to take a hurried tour of the Chinese and Japanese Gardens in Jurong on the west end of Singapore. Jurong is a man-made island (connected to multiple small islands), based on the Jurong District Master Plan to bring together port, shipyard, chemical plant complex, and light and heavy industries. Two gardens are on Jurong Lake. The first is a Chinese Garden partially completed with pagoda and tortoise / turtle sanctuary and rows of statues of Confucius, Qu Yuan, etc. The neighboring Japanese Garden was closed but I saw many stone lanterns and Bonsais laid out in the distance, probably still in the preparation stages. The flat and open gardens were surrounded by high rise apartments. It was quite a sight. The two gardens will surely become a breathtaking park when completed.