Singapore: Garden goals

Andrew Sia, The Star 30 Aug 09;

CONCRETE + greenery = green oasis? If there is one city in the region that has softened and swathed its urban concrete jungle with lush landscaping, it is Singapore.

I notice its verdant tree-lined roads, admire how the bridges are carefully covered with creepers, and rejoice that the open-air car park is cool and shady.

The “Garden City” was first proclaimed so back in the 1980s. Now, Singapore wants to go even further and become a “City in the Garden”, where greenery permeates the whole urban fabric.

According to its National Parks Board (Nparks), it will be possible, in a few years, to walk, cycle or roller-blade around the whole of the island republic along verdant, landscaped paths without having to worry about motorised traffic. And there will be gardens in the sky, garden roofs and terraces, and greened walls.

In most parts of the world, population growth is the oft-quoted reason (or excuse) for deforestation. Singapore has a land area of only 700 square kilometres. But between 1986 and 2007, its green cover grew from 35.7% to 46.5% (measured by satellite imaging), as its population leapt rom 2.7 million to 4.6 million.

Economic reasons

The whole push to make Singapore green began in the 1960s. The aim was to create a pleasant living environment, and attract foreign investors, who would be able to see for themselves how well the landscape (and the nation) was taken care of.

“We had to make this a First World oasis ... Without having to tell anything to the (foreign investor) CEO, I knew he would understand that ... this is a country where the administration works,” Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew recalled in a dialogue during the 150th anniversary of the Singapore Botanical Gardens last May.

“You just can’t plant a tree and walk away. The tree will die ... If you plant under a flyover, you’ve got to get forest shrubs that grow in shaded areas. It’s complex (maintenance) that all people who run big organisations will understand,” he said.

In other words, landscaping was to be Singapore’s hidden “green trump card”.

Lee also admitted that planting and maintaining trees was “the easy part”. The tough part was “to get people to change from Third World to First World behaviour”, leading to endless campaigns for people “not to pee in elevators” and, he joked, “not to steal the plants”.

Finally, Singapore has reached the stage where people feel a sense of ownership for their own environment.

“It took some time to get them to understand (that) if you keep your environment nice and clean, your property values go up,” Lee noted.

Urban biodiversity

Today, residents and visitors can explore different natural habitats. They can trek the coastal hill forests of Labrador Nature reserve in the south of Singapore, watch migratory birds from Siberia stop over at the mangroves of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in the north, or mountain bike around the dipterocarp hill forests of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

While the 46.5% “green cover” includes trees in urban settings, the country has also committed 10% of its land area to full-scale parks and nature reserves.

“The government has adopted the policy to legally protect representatives of key indigenous ecosystems,” explains Ng Lang, the CEO of Nparks in a policy paper.

Despite being a highly urbanised city, Singapore has relatively rich biodiversity, including some 360 species of birds, among them hornbills. In fact, efforts are being made to encourage the breeding of rarer birds, by growing plants they can feed on.

Even those who cannot bear to tear themselves away from the shopping complexes will be enticed to visit the Singapore Botanic Gardens, declared the “best urban jungle in Asia” by Time Magazine last year. It’s just five minutes from Orchard Road! I was impressed that the nation’s history is not just about personalities and buildings; the grand old tembusu is hailed as a “heritage tree”, and is featured on its five-dollar note.

Green web

On the garden goals, Ng says the guideline is to provide 0.8 hectare of park per 1,000 people, via a nationwide network of parks, including small neighbourhood ones. And these will all be linked – even if they are on hills separated by busy roads!

An example is the Southern Ridges, where three major parks are linked by two eye-catching pedestrian bridges – called Henderson Waves and Alexandra Arch – to create a nine-kilometre chain of leafy pedestrian paths through the hills.

The chain begins from the forests of Mount Faber Park (where the cable cars to Sentosa Island swing out), and winds through Telok Blangah Hill Park (which has seaside views), Hort(iculture) Park (a gardening and educational centre) and Kent Ridge Park (near the National University of Singapore) before ending at the beaches of West Coast Park.

On a guided walk through the Southern Ridges by Soh Hui Hiang, one of the managers for Telok Blangah Hill Park, I note just how much attention has been paid to detail.

Soh personally walks through the park every two or three days to check on the trees. Showing me a certain “rojak tree” (Dillenia suffruticosa), she explains:

“They tend to grow too strongly, so we cut them down and replace them with fruit trees like nutmeg and mangosteen. We don’t want certain trees to dominate this park while the fruit trees will be good to attract birds here.”

Even the walkways have been carefully planned using light-weight grid metal so that sunlight can pass through to the plants below.

By linking all the patches of greenery through its Park Connector Network (PCN), Singapore obviously hopes to create a synergy greater than the sum of its parts.

The biggest green web thus far is the 42km Eastern Coastal PCN, which enables people to jog, cycle or even roller-blade along specially landscaped lanes from the beaches of East Coast Park to inland parks at Bedok town and on to more beaches at Changi Beach Park and Pasir Ris. This PCN was even used for the first Asian night-time marathon last year.

“By 2013, we aim to develop a 300km island-wide network of green corridors that will link major parks and nature areas in Singapore,” declares the Nparks 2008 Annual Report.

Ng adds that “the park connectors will enhance the sense of green space throughout the city.”

In the rush to develop the country in the 1970s and 80s, many rivers were canalised with grey concrete walls. Now the trend is being reversed under the Active, Beautiful and Clean (ABC) Waters Programme.

Some of the harsh concrete walls of the canals will be broken down, and landscaped to integrate with nearby park connectors to create land and water-based recreational space. The technical terms used are almost poetic: “softscaping our waterways” to integrate “blue and green spaces”.

Sky gardens

After the terrestrial and aquatic landscaping, comes skyscaping!

“There is an increasing adoption of skyrise greenery in new iconic buildings such as the National Library Building, and the upcoming Eco-Precinct by the Housing Development Board (HDB),” Ng says.

Singapore is targeting some 50 hectares of skyrise greenery by 2030 and its Urban Redevelopment Autho-rity (URA) launched its LUSH Pro-gramme (Landscaping for Urban Spa-ces and High-Rises) in April. This of-fers financial and planning incentives to developers to provide greenery at the upper levels of highrise buildings.

For instance, precious extra floor space (above the permitted Master Plan intensity) in the downtown and Orchard Road areas can be allowed if developers build roof top gardens, which can then be used as outdoor refreshment areas.

Cheong Koon Hean, CEO of of URA, underlines, “We want to ensure that our city dwellers are never far away from greenery, even with high density living.”

Thus far, more than 100 developments have been approved with communal “sky terraces”, where residents of high-rises can socialise literallyamidst “gardens in the sky”. In addition, skyscaping also helps cool down the urban “heat island” effect

And after green roofs and balconies, even the very vertical walls of buildings may be planted over! At Hort Park, I see various types of walls filled with plants.

“These are experimental,” explains marketing manager Yvonne Cheng. “We are trying to see which plants, planting mediums and watering systems work best.”

Serious business

Singapore is so serious about its greenery that it has planned three “world-class gardens” on prime land at the Marina Bay waterfront (near the upcoming Integrated Resorts).

The first phase, a 52-hectare Gardens at Marina South, is scheduled to open in 2011. It includes the Cooled Conservatories (an “energy efficient” showcase of plants from tropical mountains and the Mediterranean), SuperTrees (“spectacular” 16-storey vertical gardens with flowering climbers and ferns) as part of“plant-based edutainment”.

Yet, as Lee points out, perhaps the most important part is for the people themselves to buy into the idea of a green environment. At East Coast Park one Saturday evening, I see how every car park is full as Singaporeans are out in force, walking, eating, cycling or building sand castles along this long and lovely beach park.

To enhance the people’s personal stake in their environment, the Community in Bloom programme was launched in 2005 to build a strong “community gardening” culture of beautifying one’s surroundings and foster social bonding says Ng Cheow Kheng, assistant director of the Streetscape Project at Nparks.

There are now 320 community gardening groups in Singapore.

The over 21,000 people employed in the landscape industry are given government training provided to turn “gardeners” into “green collar professionals” – such as Certified Arborists (“tree care professionals”), Certified Practising Horticulturists, and even Certified Playground Safety Inspectors (qualifications for the last are accredited to Australian and American institutes.

During a media trip to Korea last year, I was briefed by officials on their ambitious plans to turn Seoul into a “city with soul”. Buzzwords like “eco-intelligent-city” and “landscape architecture” were all over the place.

Just as Minister Mentor Leeenvisioned 40 years ago, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon says, “We must create a city environment where people want to come to invest and live with their businesses and their families. Attractiveness is the key to national competitiveness.”

The strategy in Korea was that as Shanghai, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo are all competing to become Asian power hubs, luscious gardens may become the “green trump card” that draws “quality” people (and yes, investments) in.

It’s fascinating how hard-nosed, business-minded cities have turned to greenie gardening in such a big way.

I just want to cycle through the parks and along the beaches of eastern Singapore. Soon.