“The blend of gardens and gambling is attracting Singapore’s financial community to what was once a toxic site, writes Robin Lane Fox”
Where have you seen an incredible garden made in the past 10 years? Not round my house, I fear, where I pursue a predictably English ideal of receding beauty, and not at Chelsea Flower Show, either, where the designs fade from the mind by early June. I have been stunned and incredulous only once, down by the harbour-bay in Singapore. Until 2006 the site was a polluted and corroding zone. Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay was then thrown open to a design competition which drew more than 70 entries worldwide. The first phase is now up and running. In the first seven months more than 3m visitors have been to enjoy it, 20 times as many as the visitors to a Chelsea Show. So far the Bay South phase is the main draw with Bay East and Bay Central still to come fully on stream and double the area on view.
(Via FT.com – House & Home.)