Singapore: Orchid Garden

On Monday I received four postcards: two from Singapore and two from Thailand.

One of the cards from Singapore shows the Orchid Garden. In the Orchid Garden is the largest display of orchids in the world. The national flower of Singapore is the orchid Vanda Miss Joaquim.
The Orchid Garden is a part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The Singapore Botanic Gardens are circa 74ha large and have more than 4 million visits per annum. The history of botanic gardens in Singapore began in 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles (the founder of Singapore and a keen naturalist) founded a botanic garden on Government Hill. This first botanic garden had to close in 1829, but the British government and trading companies initiated the development of botanic gardens for the research, cultivation and preservation of native plants. Today’s Botanic Gardens were established in 1859 by a agri-horticultural society on a 23ha large area. In 1866 the Garden was extended and the Swan Lake was dredged. In 1874 the society got financial problems and gave the Botanic Garden to the government. In 1875 James Murton recommended by the director of the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew (Joseph Hooker) became the Superintendent. He set up a library and a herbarium. In 1963 the Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew started a tree planting programme. Since 2012 are the Botanic Gardens on the UNESCO Tentative List.

Today there are 8300 taxa in cultivation in the Botanic Garden, 650000 specimens in the herbarium and 30000 books and 41000 rare books in the library.

EDIT:

The Singapore Botanical Gardens were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on the 4th July 2015.

Stamps:
Definitives (whole set) (issued 16-10-2013)

Thank You very much Jeremy!