Singapore Botanic Gardens – A UNESCO World Heritage

Singaporeans must be very happy that they had achieved another great title for working so hard to make the Botanic Garden a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Everyone is now so proud of this Garden. But when credit is due it must be acknowledged and rightly go to the people that worked so hard to make this happened. What is the name of the founder of the Gardens? According to Wikipedia, ‘The first "Botanical and Experimental Garden" in Singapore was established in 1822 on Government Hill at Fort Canning by Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore and a keen naturalist…and Lawrence Niven was the first Superintendent and landscape designer….Henry Ridley became the first director in 1888….Professor Eric Holtum pioneered orchid hybridisation and became the director from 1925 to 1949.…. from 1942 to 1945, Hidezo Tanakadate (田中館秀三), a professor of geology from Tohoku Imperial University, took over control of the Singapore Botanic Gardens and the Raffles Museum.’

The present Director is Nigel Taylor. In between then and now there is a long list of British Directors overseeing the growth and development of the Gardens like the British have never left Singapore. In this garden they are still in charge. And thanks to their contributions, the Garden is now a World Heritage Site. And the British would likely be here for a very long time as there is unlikely to be a local that will have the talent and skills set to run the Gardens for another century, unless Tharman thinks it is time to train a local to take over in 10 years time. We really cannot do without foreign talents running the show.

I have another reason to feel happy and relief that the Gardens have acquired this status and also for the presence of the British in managing the Gardens. Without the British, the 74 hectares of Gardens could be history. How could such a valuable piece of landed property be left to waste in the hard of the city, the choicest real estate in the island? Imagine how much it would fetch, how many good class bungalows could be built on it, or how many thousands of 50 storey condos could be built on it?

Let me do some mental calculations, 1 sq ft is $3,000. Multiply this by 50 times for a 50 storey condo, it would mean 1 sq ft of land could fetch $150,000. A unit of 1,000 sq ft would be $3m and a condo of 50 units would be $150m. You can keep on multiplying and the numbers would drive one to nuts.

It is simply crazy to leave this piece of real estate as a garden. How can we afford to do such a thing? We need space and good land for 6.9m or 10m people! As a developer, this is really too good to be missed, and a lot of revenue for the govt too.

Thank God, this piece of real estate is now safe and sound. No one can touch it with its UNESCO status now. But don’t be too sure if a rogue govt is in place in the future, or a dictator takes over the island. For now it is very safe. Thanks to the foreign talents and the British Empire for this World Heritage Site. May they rule the Gardens forever. They have worked so hard for the Gardens over two centuries.