Gardens by the Bay
Gardens by the Bay is a 250-acre nature park right next to Marina Bay, built around the iconic Supertree Grove — a cluster of tree-like vertical gardens up to 50 meters tall, free to walk beneath and free to watch light up during the nightly Garden Rhapsody show. The paid Cloud Forest and Flower Dome conservatories (combo ticket roughly $28-32) house a man-made mountain waterfall and rotating floral displays. Go around 5-6pm to catch the conservatories in daylight and the Supertrees after dark.
Gardens by the Bay is the closest thing Singapore has to a signature attraction that isn't a building — a genuinely strange and wonderful piece of botanical engineering, half free and half ticketed, and it works best if you time your visit to catch both halves.
Supertree Grove — free, and the best part
Eighteen Supertrees, some over 50 meters tall, covered in more than 160,000 plants and functioning as actual solar collectors and rain-harvesting structures, not just decoration. Walking among them is completely free, day or night. After dark, they run a synchronized light-and-sound show — Garden Rhapsody — for free, typically twice each evening.
OCBC Skyway
A 128-meter aerial walkway connecting two of the tallest Supertrees, giving an elevated view over the gardens and the Marina Bay skyline. Small separate ticket (roughly $6-8); worth it for photographers, skippable if budget is tight since the ground-level view is already excellent.
Cloud Forest and Flower Dome
| Conservatory | What's inside | Approx. cost |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Forest | A 35-meter indoor mountain with the world's tallest indoor waterfall, wrapped in a mist-shrouded rainforest walkway | Combo ticket ~$28-32 |
| Flower Dome | The world's largest glass greenhouse, with rotating seasonal flower displays from Mediterranean and semi-arid climates | Combo ticket ~$28-32 |
Buy the Cloud Forest + Flower Dome combo ticket rather than single entry — it's cheaper per conservatory, and book online a day ahead in peak season (June-August, December) to skip the queue at the counter.
Best time to visit
Arrive around 5-6pm: you'll get an hour or so of daylight inside the conservatories (they're genuinely striking with natural light filtering through the glass), then walk out into the Supertree Grove right as it gets dark for Garden Rhapsody. Doing it the other way around — Supertrees first, conservatories after dark — means missing the daylight effect inside the domes.
How long do you need?
- Supertree Grove + Garden Rhapsody only: 1.5-2 hours, free.
- Add one conservatory: 2.5-3 hours total.
- Both conservatories plus the Supertrees and Skyway: half a day, comfortably.
Getting there
Bayfront MRT station is a short, mostly covered walk from the entrance, and it's directly connected to Marina Bay Sands via an overhead bridge — easy to combine both in one outing.