Singapore Botanic Gardens - Just Me

A rare Monday afternoon without much plans, I took a bus to Botanic Gardens with my camera.

The Gardens is quite empty since it was a weekday and nearly 4pm. The perfect time to take some scenery shots without the human clutter.

Was trying out to shoot with manual mode, it took me quite a few shots to get something presentable. But definitely a good chance to hone my skills.

First time I venture deeper into the Gardens and saw a few of the Heritage Trees. Majestic mature trees are the natural heritage of Singapore and serve as green landmarks of our Tropical Garden City.

Malayan Terminalia or Jelawi
At 47m, this tree is one of the tallest trees in the Gardens. Located at the junction of Liane Road and Lower Ring Road.

Kapok Tree or White Silk-cotton Tree
This 43m tall tree was received from the Gold Coast, Ghana in 1932. Located along Lower Ring Road.

Tucked in a quiet corner of the Gardens is this cactus gardens. If I ever have my own garden, I would definitely have a cactus portion.

It’s not rare to spot these cute little squirrels in the garden.

On the way out, I can’t help buy took this photo, I think I still prefer to shoot people.

Talipot Palm @ Botanic Gardens

Highly recommended by my mother who visited the Singapore Botanic Gardens on New Year’s Day, we (wife was thinking of an afternoon nap instead) brought the girls out over the weekend to check out the 80 years old dying tree.

The Talipot Palm (Corypha umbraculifera) is a rare tree that only flowers once in it’s entire lifetime of 60-80 years. And for this few weeks, one such Talipot Palm is nearly that stage, flowering for the first and the last time after 80 years of growth. During this short period, it will produce some 24 million tiny flowers, and hopefully, some seeds, before finally dying off.

Closer look at the tiny pale yellow flowers.

This is how it looks when it has fallen down.

Since we are there on a rare sunny afternoon, the girls took the chance to scoot around and enjoyed “the greatest day of our lives” as acclaimed by Joey.

The Christmas feel is still pretty much alive around the gardens.

Just besides the Talipot Palm is this gigantic tree with its roots spread out in almost every direction. I am guessing the tree should be more than a hundred years old.

Every time we go to the Botanic Gardens, there are always new flowers to discover.

The viewing of Talipot Palm will end this week, check out the dates and make sure you don’t miss such a rare opportunity. Have fun!

Singapore Botanic Gardens

The last time we brought the girls to the Gardens was almost a year back. Both the girls have grown up so much in just one year.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens have been opened for more than 150 years. Overheard this fact on radio the other day, our Botanic Gardens’ size is 74 hectare, it is half the size of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew or around 1/5 of the size of Central Park in New York. Though we are smaller in size, our Botanic Gardens is the only garden in the world that opens from 5am till 12mn daily, no admission fee, except for the National Orchid Garden.

Much has changed since the time I used to visit the place when I was young. Now, the place is so much cleaner and you can see a lot more families gathering on the grass areas.

The girls imagined themselves to be butterflies in the gardens. So cute.

Actually at Botanic Gardens, the main idea is to enjoy the nature and spend some family time together. Just be prepared to bring an umbrella and bring lots of water especially for kids. If you want, prepare a sandwich or two.

It took us about an hour or more to slowly walked from the front visitor centre (Tanglin Gate) to the Ginger Garden. Click here to download the map of the ground.

Along the way, it’s one of the best time to educate the girls on things like photosynthesis, evaporation, decomposition, etc.. If you are not as well versed in Science like me, can consider the educational tours available.

Klessis teaching the girls about the fishes and tortoise in the pond.

Let you in a little secret, if you can’t see the swans on the Swan Lake, then take the small road turning left immediately after the lake and you will find a feeding pod for the swans, you may be able to catch a much closer view of them.

And if you walk further in along the path, you will get to another pond, you can find a few bigger swans too. Jayne was so excited to see one of it up close. I was slightly worried the swan will run up from the pond and chase us. Paranoia.

It was the first time we walked to the Ginger Garden, besides the usual greens, there was a made-man waterfall and that provided some fun for the girls. And probably some form of cooling effect.

After the cool-off, Jayne was back to her cheekiness. Suddenly she just ran off to one of the wooden benches and posed for me.

With such cutie, it made all the effort worth it.

Some other photos I took.

We will be back again. OK Jayne?

Check out the Singapore Botanic Gardens visitor information.