Jacob Ballas Children's Garden at Singapore Botanic Gardens

by Rebecca

A few weeks ago we spent a leisurely Sunday at the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. It's a portion of the Singapore Botanic Gardens which is a recognized World Heritage Site. The garden's are conveniently located right beside an MRT Station, so it was very easy for us to get to.

The Children's Garden is 4 hectares (almost 9 acres). It's a huge jungly garden space filled with paths to explore, ponds to peer in, logs to climb over and balance on. It's very stroller friendly with wide paved paths, and ramps in the few places where there are also stairs, but there are many more adventurous paths calling you off the main ones. There's a number of playground spaces, which work for the adults too. I liked the tree house style which called us all to climb up and see where the tree tops lead. There were nice shady spots to eat a snack. We had took a break under some giant concrete toadstools. They would have been good shelter if it had rained.

Sand is a common playground base in Singapore. The kids all take off their shoes to play.

There's a manned gate at the entrance to the Gardens, which makes me feel more secure about letting the kids roam around a bit. Adults are only allowed in if accompanied by a child. Kids have to be over 12 to enter unaccompanied.

Exploring the tree houses. It's not as high as it looks and you're have to be trying pretty hard to fall off. 
Down the garden path. 
I'm pretty sure someone was singing, "I've been staring at the edge of the water..."

The farther we got from the gate the more exciting the gardens became. We saw turtles, a 3 or 4 foot lizard (a Monitor?), lots of birds, some fish, snails, ants.... We saw some new birds for us, even with our noisy romping children. We looked them up in our bird guide once we got home. Ms.E is still our avid bird watcher.

The White-Breasted Water Hen. 

We noticed the plants at the gardens too. Not everything was labeled, but there was enough with signs for our interests, and we learnt the names to a few locally growing ones that we had been wondering about.

We knew this one, but the kids liked seeing bananas actually growing on a tree.
These are Ms.E's favorite. She called them Avatars before we learned they were Spider Lilies.