(These are the original pictures before edit)
(Picture after edit)
Like the Australian Garden at Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, this is a garden designed to provoke. Singapore's Gardens by the Bay isn't your typical urban park. It's the flagship project for the Singapore National Parks department who set themselves the ambitious and tantalising vision of creating a City in a Garden.
The total area of the three public gardens at Marina Bay is 100 hectares – 2.5 times the size of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens or to use a more universal (if Melbourne is the universe) measure, 50 times the area of the MCG playing field. So it’s big.
Singapore, it seems, was after a cross between Central Park in New York and Kew Gardens in London. What they got was something entirely different, and all the better for it. An interesting distinction is made between these Gardens (by the Bay) and the (Botanic) Gardens uptown. Both are run by the National Parks department, but the former is for horticultural recreation, the latter (largely) for education, research and conservation.
This is perhaps not a surprising distinction but one that is not made often. Most botanic gardens around the world, including the three I've worked in (Sydney, Kew, Melbourne) would argue that they combine science, conservation and recreation. Not only would they argue this but their Acts usually obligate it and their actions actively pursue this agenda.
The total area of the three public gardens at Marina Bay is 100 hectares – 2.5 times the size of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens or to use a more universal (if Melbourne is the universe) measure, 50 times the area of the MCG playing field. So it’s big.
Singapore, it seems, was after a cross between Central Park in New York and Kew Gardens in London. What they got was something entirely different, and all the better for it. An interesting distinction is made between these Gardens (by the Bay) and the (Botanic) Gardens uptown. Both are run by the National Parks department, but the former is for horticultural recreation, the latter (largely) for education, research and conservation.
This is perhaps not a surprising distinction but one that is not made often. Most botanic gardens around the world, including the three I've worked in (Sydney, Kew, Melbourne) would argue that they combine science, conservation and recreation. Not only would they argue this but their Acts usually obligate it and their actions actively pursue this agenda.
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