By Rachel Chang
Apr 25, 2022
JUST SHY OF ITS 10th anniversary in June, Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay has topped the list of the Most Beautiful Gardens in the World According to Tourists, in a study from indoor air quality experts HouseFresh.
The company pored through about 1,000 landmarks on Tripadvisor, looking through gardens that travelers noted as “beautiful” in 2021. The 101-hectare Singapore landmark — best known for its grove of 50-meter-tall, human-made, crazy-colorful Supertrees, vertical gardens that double as light and music shows when the sun sets — had 12,385 mentions of the term, far above the place ranked second most beautiful garden in the world. That spot went to Morocco’s Jardin Majoelle with 8,187 mentions, followed by France’s historic Luxembourg Gardens with 6,818 mentions.
Despite just opening in June 2012, Gardens by the Bay — which is actually made up of three gardens called Bay Central, Bay East, and Bay South — has been cinching awards throughout its young life, including the World Building of the Year in 2012 at the World Architecture Festival Awards and the Silver Award for Destinations Building Back Better Post-Covid at the World Responsible Tourism Awards in 2021.
In addition to the Supertrees, other standouts of the gardens include a Cloud Forest conservatory with diverse global plant species, Flower Dome with changing colorful blooms, Floral Fantasy with creatively displayed flowers, and the OCBC Skyway walk about 22 meters in the air. There’s also an Active Garden with exercise stations, the Kingfisher Wetlands Trail through varying ecosystems, Sun Pavilion among more than 1,000 desert plants, The Canyon featuring the world’s biggest collection of sculpture rocks, Heritage Gardens depicting the city-state’s history, and the World of Plants through spectacular topiary. With more than 1.5 million plants from 19,000 species, it’s no wonder that so many travelers leave in such awe of its beauty.
The rest of the top 10 from the study are Las Vegas’ Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, British Columbia’s Butchart Gardens, Perth’s Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, Cape Town’s Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Netherlands’ Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse, and Christchurch Botanic Gardens. For a full list, visit the HouseFresh site.
