From a crumbling villa's gardens in Rome to local trees threatened by development, Singapore's curator of nature scours the earth to salvage flora for Singapore's botanical ark
Paul Gilfeather Today Online 5 Jun 11;
WHEN the S$1-billion Gardens by the Bay project finally comes into bloom next year, it will also mark the culmination of a journey which began almost 30 years ago for Singapore parks supremo Dr Tan Kiat Wee.
If the seeds for Singapore's Garden City concept were sown by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, his curator of nature has undoubtedly been Dr Tan, who this week received the President's Award for the Environment, the nation's highest "green" accolade.
Most Singaporeans have probably never heard of him. But his innovations have impacted on the lives of almost every resident: From the world-class Botanic Gardens, to the cross-country park connectors which now stretch to almost 300km, to the super garden on reclaimed land at Marina Bay, he has left his indelible mark on the island.
Indeed, you cannot tell the story of the Gardens by the Bay without dragging a rake over the 67-year-old botanist's monumental contribution.
Dr Tan's fundamental belief is that by providing natural, green and serene spaces, prejudices, differences and cultural divides can be overcome; it belies an empathy with the ordinary, hard-working people of Singapore.
"We are not only dealing with infrastructure but with social structure - as well as a unifying venue for our different races and cultures," he explains.
"The people come to these places and they mingle and mix without their cultural baggage because we provide neutral ground for connecting with nature. And this is so important for a place like Singapore."
Referring to the Gardens' location in the heart of the new downtown by the Marina Bay Financial District, he says: "This is the most precious land we have in Singapore for development. Singaporeans in the heartlands say 'why are you always spending so much money developing land for tourists?'
"But this shows we are investing our resources in the people ... We are designing a state-of-the-art garden as a national park, so people who are maybe not wealthy enough to travel, can still see the kind of botanical offerings in this garden."
These include flora native to the Mediterranean, South America and Africa.
AN EXPECTANT FATHER
Dr Tan, the city's first native-born director of the Botanic Gardens, shelved plans for retirement after getting the go-ahead for his waterfront project in 2005.
He has worked tirelessly for the past six years. He has had to overcome rocketing steel and sand prices, compete with the organisers of the Beijing Olympics for rare plants and watch as the financial crisis of 2007-09 decimated his budget.
In April, some 12 months from completion, he gave Today an exclusive tour of the site and its two giant domes which will house the rare plants and trees which Dr Tan and his team have scoured the planet for. These are living, breathing pieces of an environmental masterpiece.
I was seeing the unfinished project even before Dr Tan's biggest supporter, Mr Lee, whose VIP tour was postponed so more progress could be made.
As we began the tour, he said, only half-joking: "I will drag you though the mud, but I won't do it to him."
Telling the story of the project for the first time, Dr Tan reveals how important the former Prime Minister's support has been. "It is obvious," he says. "If I didn't have that kind of support we could have never got as far as we did. So I'm glad he had the longevity, presence of mind and determination throughout, right up to this project."
As his eyes flash around the site, he examines the dozens of different jobs being done by the 300-strong construction team
He paces around the soggy soil like an expectant father, awaiting the arrival of a new son. And, in a way, that is what's happening here.
Dr Tan possesses many of the qualities you often find in first-rate politicians. It is not clear whether he was born with these attributes or if he developed them as he was plunged into the battle for Singapore's green spaces.
Physically he is short, but his charisma and stocky build contribute to his strong presence. His enthusiasm and agile mind impress; it is hard not be infected by his seemingly permanently sunny disposition. Inside his head, a computer-like brain whizzes at a million miles-per-hour as he talks in quick-fire but softly-spoken sentences.
A BARGAIN AT S$1 BILLION
The bulk of the project is centred on what is known as Bay South. The site will host a giant, horticulturally-themed garden, two giant domes and space-age super trees.
The Flower Dome is designed to give visitors a feel for the four seasons and will feature a host of unusual plants from the Mediterranean and subtropical regions.
The other conservatory will be called the Cloud Forest. This will house exotic plants from the Tropical Montane region, typically found thousands of metres above sea level.
There will be scenic walkways taking visitors 30m above ground and around the man-made Cloud Mountain, which features the world's first indoor waterfall.
A tree-top walk will take people around the 12 super trees, which range from 25m to 50m in height. The super trees will come to life at night with state-of-the-art lighting and projected media, while being covered in exotic ferns, vines and orchids.
The super trees also act as environmental engines for the Gardens. Some are chimneys for air intake, cooling and exhaust and others boast solar panels on their canopies. Dr Tan says considering the technology being used to create the Gardens, including a ground-breaking underground air-cooling system, the project is a bargain at S$1 billion.
I ask him if the thought of what the land might have been used for without his intervention keeps him awake at night. He says: "I know what it was going to be used for ... office blocks and condos." You get the feeling that as well as the bureaucrats, it has been the property and office block developers he has been fighting since returning from the United States in 1983.
Since then he has acted like Singapore's green-fingered King Midas, with everything he touches turning from concrete grey to green. "I got myself into a long distance relay-race. I became a green steward for Singapore," says the Gardens' chief executive.
HOW IT SHOULD BE
"If you look at the whole of Singapore, by the late 1800s, 85 per cent of the city had been scalped for timber and so forth. We had little natural habitat. What has been regenerated came from the pockets of primary forest still remaining and what we went out to get.
"As the city developed we are creating our own environment. You cannot plant forests in the cityscape so very early, we took to heart what Lee Kuan Yew was saying: 'I am going around the world and seeing trees that are beautiful. Why can't we bring them to Singapore?' So, we have been trying to recreate that mantle of nature, the natural heritage that had been ripped.
"We said, 'let's turn Singapore into a botanical ark and later an ecological ark'," said Dr Tan.
The five-year process of building the Gardens by the Bay has seen him travel the world collecting trees and plants from four continents. He would, for instance, hear of an old villa on the outskirts of Rome crumbling and up for development, and race to the site in the hope of salvaging some of the gardens.
On my tour, we take a mini-bus to Bay East to inspect some of these trees still in quarantine beneath a massive road bridge, which acts as a protective canopy. Attached to each tree is a story of adventure to how it was recovered.
Included in the collection are 1,000-year-old olive trees from Spain, which make for a spectacular sight sitting alongside others saved from parts of Singapore.
With a grin from ear to ear, Dr Tan says: "When the Formula 1 racing came, we salvaged all the roadside trees. Throughout Singapore, wherever there were developments we would go in and you will see the big trees that we were able to dig up. We can actually identify the trees and say to each other, 'remember that one was at Upper Cross Street' ...
"But that was not sufficient. My challenge to our staff was 60 per cent must be plants that we don't normally see in our parks and gardens."
There's no doubt Singapore's curator of nature does the job out of love. I ask him if a shortage of public funds ever left him in the position where he paid for trees with his credit card. He smirks and simply says: "Sometimes that is how it has to be."
HISTORY TOLD IN GREENS
Like the Botanic Gardens, the new park will be mainly free, except a still yet-to-be-decided charge for entry to the domed areas. That will pay for the state-of-the-art cool air system that is piped underground to the entire site. It will be open 24 hours a day and include a 30,000-seater outdoor stadium for concerts, as well as restaurants and food courts.
But Dr Tan is determined that the new Gardens also tells the nation's story. "We are explaining the history of Singapore through the plant perspective" he says.
"We began as indigenous races, a bunch of pirates from this region. Then, as it grew as a colony, the colonial plantations tried out different crops like coconut, coffee and nutmeg before they came to rubber. They took in the workers from the surrounding regions, the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, and that is the immigrant nation that became Singapore.
"So, we have included a colonial garden, then a Chinese garden, a Malay garden and an Indian garden."
Dr Tan's had parents wanted him to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer, an idea he rebelled against. When he was just 16, he was nominated Singapore's sole delegate to the World Youth Forum. He made good use of his short time in the US and secured scholarships which eventually led to a Masters degree and a doctorate from the University of Miami.
He spent nine years learning how to develop botanic gardens before being appointed director of the Orlando Botanic Gardens in Florida. On returning to Singapore, he became the first Singaporean chief of the city's Botanic Gardens.
"I was asked to head this big thing that became the National Parks Board and I really didn't want to because all I was interested in doing at that time was restoring the Singapore Botanic Gardens, which at the time was little more than a park. But in the process of forming the first National Parks Board, saving the natural heritage of Singapore became a priority in my mind as well.
"To me, the epitome of the parks was the nature reserves. To me that was where the battle lines were drawn ... The nature reserves were without question under threat in the 70s, 80s and 90s. But we turned the corner and today, we have actually added to the nature reserves and there is a greater area under the protection of nature reserves than when I first came back in 1983."
It has been, in his own words, quite an amazing journey. He adds, almost poetically: "We were always reaching for the stars when a planet will do. But the planet we have created is truly something."
