Sneak Peek at Singapore’s Gardens By The Bay
Baku, April 4 (AZERTAC). Starting this June, people living in Singapore’s highly urban environment will get a little taste of what the rest of Southeast Asia enjoys - a tropical rainforest, complete with a waterfall streaming down from what its designers describe as a “mountain” on the edge of downtown. To get up this 35-meter mountain, no climbing is necessary - lifts are available to get to the top, though for the (somewhat) more adventurous there’s a winding walk in air-conditioned comfort.
Flowers in the “Cloud Forest,” one of the two climate-controlled greenhouses, thrive in mountainous regions artificially replicated in the conservatory.
Gardens by the Bay is expected to become one of Singapore’s biggest tourist draws, with one of the world’s most technologically-advanced green spaces when its biggest garden — Bay South, which includes the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome, the second large conservatory — officially opens to the public on June 29 this year. With large greenhouses and eccentric “supertrees” already visible from the city-state’s highways and high-rises downtown, the project has garnered much fanfare since work started back in 2007, but at a media preview on Tuesday an official opening date for its first phase was finally announced. (Other large parts of Gardens by the Bay — Bay East and Bay Central — won’t be done for a while).
The Flower Dome was open to the public briefly during an orchid show last year. But at the media briefing Tuesday, members of the media were allowed a peek into the Cloud Forest as it inches towards completion. Designed to replicate the feeling of being in mountainous regions of Sabah, Malaysia or perhaps South America, the conservatory - which greets visitors with a spray of mist from the waterfall as soon as they walk in - will feature a cool-moist climate and more than 130,000 plants that thrive in tropical mountain areas. In a zone dubbed the “Lost World,” visitors will be able to walk through ferns, mosses, pitcher plants and other greenery usually found high above sea level.
Though completely man-made, Singapore hopes the gardens will rival some of the world’s most celebrated green spaces and help it achieve its vision of a “city in a garden” where beautifully-manicured green spaces are common.
Pollen will also have a dessert bar, adding to a menu which will center around Mediterranean food, when it opens this year.
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