Malaysia: Taman Botani Putrajaya (KL Botanic Gardens)
I finally got to the gardens after 30 minutes and it looked promising enough, brand new information centre.. all very smart and clean. Unfortunately, there is no way of being kind about this .. it is a very mediocre place. Even allowing for the fact that it is new (opened in 2003) and incomplete – there are two more phases planned -, I think this is a misconceived project on a poorly selected site. You walk out of the information centre onto a long Canopy Bridge which claims to overlook rainforest .. but actually spans several roads and lots of nothingness. It gets worse. This whole place looks like its designer normally specialised in golf courses .. lots of grass, fake hills, 'viewpoints’ from which you can see the dreadful tower blocks in the area. I found the choice of hard landscaping terrible .. concrete roads, bricks .. almost nothing in the way of natural materials. It took a while for the penny to drop .. on my way there was a notice that the tramway service had been suspended. I think the idea is that you got on a tram at the information centre and toured the very small gardens from the comfort of a tram .. that explained the acres of ugly concrete road.
http://www.i-putra.com.my/minisite/tamanbotani.html
Trying to be balanced ...... but
I will try to say something nice about the gardens .. there were a few good examples of plants .. the heliconia section and they seemed to have great success with bamboo and palms .. particularly the 'sealing wax palm'. But that is about it .. the gardens are built on a hillside leading down to a lake .. which has a rental service hiring speed boats to youngsters who go through an obstacle course next to the gardens. . churning up the water and a terrible racket. It is something I rarely say about a garden but in this case, it was .. Get me out of this hell!
My opinion
I cannot recommend these gardens and feel the very heavy hand of town planners and almost no influence from a garden designer.
I suspect there is a very interesting story behind the selection of this site which was apparently raw agricultural land as opposed to one of the many nearby sites with dense forest into which a real botanic garden would have made a perfect enhancement.
Fine Print
Date of travel : February 2008
Country information https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html
Now what?
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