Singapore Botanic Gardens

About

The Singapore Botanic Gardens is a tropical garden located at the fringe of the Orchard Road shopping district in Singapore. It is one of three gardens, and the only tropical garden, to be honoured as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Botanic Gardens was founded at its present site in 1859 by the Agri-horticultural Society. It played a pivotal role in the region's rubber trade boom in the early twentieth century when its first scientific director, Henry Nicholas Ridley, headed research into the plant's cultivation. By perfecting the technique of rubber extraction, which is still in use today, and promoting its economic value to planters in the region, rubber output expanded rapidly. At its height in the 1920s, the Malayan peninsula cornered half of the global latex production.