Singapore’s Sensational Orchid Garden

When Susan and I took Cindi to Meijer Gardens on her birthday last month, Cindi mentioned how much she loved orchids,  so I told her about having recently visited San Diego’s Balboa Park,  where they have this incredibly beautiful botanic building that’s overflowing with 100s (perhaps 1000s?) of orchids… more orchids than I’d ever seen in my entire life, and Cindi decided on the spot to put that building on her bucket list! Well, Cindi (and orchid lovers the world around), do I ever have news for you!  Orchids are the national flower of Singapore,  & they have a free National Orchid Garden that’s home to 60,000 orchid plants, including 1,000 different species  and more than 2,000 hybrids.  Orchids are tropical plants, and I’ve been really excited that I’ve been able  to grow a few orchids in our sunny garden room here in Michigan.  However, Singapore is just 1° north of the equator at the south end of the Malay Peninsula and is the perfect tropical environment for keeping orchids happy!  They need no shelter, such as orchids need in Michigan to keep them warm,  nor do they need protection from the heat and drought,  as they do in San Diego. In Singapore, orchids grow by the thousands outside in the fresh air and sunshine…  rather like rose gardens flourish (with care, of course) in temperate regions.  Singapore’s National Botanic Garden consists of three artistically designed and meticulously maintained hectares of gardens built on the highest hill and slopes of Singapore Botanic Gardens (which happen to be the only free garden in the world that’s open 5am-midnight every single day of the year).  So…if you’re in the area, you can go before any other attraction opens or visit long after other sites have closed!  I imagined feeling like Eve wandering through the Garden of Eden.  What would it take to produce a life that glorious?

^“For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself” (Philippians 3:20-21).