Singapore Botanic Gardens

The Singapore Botanic Gardens is the only tropical botanic garden on the UNESCO World Heritage list — 82 hectares of primary rainforest, manicured lawns, and one of the world's finest orchid collections, all in the middle of a city that has been using this garden as its green lung since 1859. The gardens are free to enter (except the National Orchid Garden) and are used daily by joggers, tai chi practitioners, picnicking families, and the occasional bridal party photographing against the tropical backdrop.

The National Orchid Garden is the crown jewel — over 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids displayed in a landscaped hillside that is the largest orchid garden in the world. Singapore has been breeding orchids since the 1920s, and the diplomatic tradition of naming hybrid orchids after visiting heads of state means the collection includes the Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher, the Vanda Miss Joaquim (the national flower), and hundreds of other varieties that exist nowhere else. The orchid breeding programme here effectively created the global orchid industry.

The gardens' history is inseparable from Singapore's. Henry Ridley, the gardens' director from 1888 to 1911, developed the techniques for tapping rubber trees that made rubber plantations commercially viable — a breakthrough that transformed Southeast Asian economies and earned him the nickname 'Mad Ridley' because nobody believed rubber would be profitable. The gardens survived the Japanese occupation (the Japanese, recognising their scientific value, continued the research programmes), and the primary rainforest section — six hectares of virgin tropical forest that has never been cleared — is one of the last patches of original lowland rainforest in Singapore.