Gardens by the bay

Gardens by the Bay brings to life NParks' vision of creating a City in a Garden. The Gardens captures the essence of Singapore as the premier tropical Garden City with the perfect environment in which to live and work - making Singapore a leading global city of the 21st century. In January 2006, an international master plan design competition was launched to seek world-class design ideas for Gardens by the Bay. It drew more than 70 entries submitted by 170 firms, from over 24 countries, including 35 from Singapore. An 11-member Jury comprising local and international experts shortlisted eight teams and two winners were announced in September 2006; namely Grant Associates for Bay South and Gustafson Porter for Bay East, both from the UK. A decision was made to develop Bay Central later. A public exhibition of the master plan concepts and models of the winning teams was held in September 2006 at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Over 10,000 people visited the exhibition and over 700 gave their feedback. An overwhelming majority 85% of those surveyed liked the features in the master plans and over 97% said they would visit the gardens. Bay South Garden broke ground in November 2007, signalling the commencement of the Gardens' development. Subsequently, development of Bay East Garden also commenced. It was developed as an interim garden to be used as a staging site for some of the rowing and canoeing events of the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in August 2010. Following the YOG, Bay East underwent reinstatement works and was open to the public in October 2011. A special preview of parts of Bay South Garden, including the Flower Dome, was held in November 2011 in conjunction with the World Orchid Conference (WOC). Some 300,000 members of the public visited both WOC and Bay South Garden.

Till 6 April, Gardens by the Bay celebrates the beauty and romance of the Rose with a new floral display in the Flower Dome that showcases one of the world's most popular blooms. Entitled "War of the Roses", the floral display draws inspiration from an event of the same name that took place in 15th century England. The historical "War of the Roses" was a series of civil wars between the House of Lancaster and the House of York that were vying for the throne of England. Its name drew reference to the emblems associated with the two Houses – the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York.

Transporting visitors to medieval times, the floral display at Gardens by the Bay features two armour-plated knights on horses amidst a battlefield of roses in different colours, shapes and sizes. A battle between the Red vs White. Other flowers complementing the display include Hydrageas, Pansies, Bellis and Alyssums. The "War of the Roses" floral display, which features some 60 varieties of England's national flower, is part of the Europe leg of the "Gardens by the Bay Goes around the World" series for 2014. With an amazing variety of prickly plants on display, the Sun Pavilion continues the efforts of the Gardens to introduce plants from various regions so that visitors can enjoy a botanical tour of the world. Visitors to the free attraction can marvel at cacti and succulents from semi-arid regions such as Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar.

The Sun Pavilion presents an unusual group of plants that may not be the most visually appealing in the conventional sense, but is no less fascinating. Together with our existing collection of succulents in the Flower Dome, it forms one of the largest cacti and succulent collections in Southeast Asia, and adds on to our horticultural mosaic of plants from different regions of the world. Look out for this special Dwarf Turk's Cap Cactus when you are walking round the pavilion. It starts off as a green and shiny ball but when it is about to flower, a special structure resembling a cap develops on top of the plant, hence its name.

And since we are there, we visited the officially opened Far East Organization Children's Garden too. It's a 1-hectare fun-filled family element to Gardens by the Bay. The Children's Garden seeks to encourage interaction with nature in a venue for fun and interactive play through integrated play equipment, water play features and educational programmes in a garden setting.