was reminded of a 2012 study from a Portland, Oregon, hospital
showing that rooms with better ventilation from outside garnered
more diverse bacterial profiles and fewer “bad” bacteria. Tan next
showed me the organic vegetable garden on the roof, which is mostly
tended by locals who enjoy gardening. Patients eat some of the
produce, and some is sold in a farmers’ market. She plucked a few
long purple and green leaves off a rhoeo oyster plant and gave them to
me to make a tea. “Our signature drink, full of antioxidents,” she said.
“Good for cooling.”
I went back to my chia-plant hotel and brewed some. Then, newly
cooled, I headed out again. Everyone told me that before I left
Singapore, I had to see the Gardens by the Bay. This is a huge, showy
billion-dollar attraction on the newly reclaimed waterfront land. A
“premier urban recreation space,” it consists of numerous outdoor
gardens and two ginormous horticultural greenhouses. Typically, such
conservatories have to be heated; here, they have to be cooled. They
showcase biozones from temperate climates, including cloud forests,
Mediterranean olive groves and the California chaparral. But the
park’s piece de resistance is a grove of eighteen Supertrees that are
entirely fake. Better than the real thing, they soar between 80 and 160
feet into the sky like giant skeletal golf tees. A narrow walkway
snakes through the canopy of a few of them so that you can view the
city skyline unencumbered and then eat high-end egg rolls on
cowhide cushions at the penthouse restaurant. The structures collect
and sprinkle rainwater on the (real, but planted) vines and bromeliads
growing on them. They collect solar power in panels, and, best yet,
they convert that electricity into an evening light extravaganza.
Recovering from the egg rolls, I settled onto the finely clipped
lawn below, surrounded by couples and small children running around
on the family outing. The sky grew dark, and the first notes of an
electronic symphony began. Suddenly, the trees erupted in colorful
neon bursts that kept perfect time with the symphony. The Led