Singapore Botanic Gardens

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.