While traveling around the world, you will see many beautiful gardens, some of the best are in botanical gardens, palaces, and large parks.  In 2018 we ended up visiting quite a few botanical gardens.  My all time favorite was the Singapore Botanic Gardens, but all of them were beautiful and well worth a stop.

Singapore

Singapore Botanic Gardens

While traveling in Singapore, we knew we wanted to visit the botanical gardens there.  Tropical areas are typically very lush, and with the daily downpours that we encountered, Singapore is no exception.  When people make lists of the best botanical gardens in the world, the Singapore Botanic Gardens almost always makes the list, and for good reason.

I could have spent days enjoying the foliage in this one.  My husband and kids had fun for a few hours, but eventually they were ready to move on.

National Orchid Garden

Inside the Singapore Botanic Gardens, we also visited the amazing National Orchid Garden.

While the rest of the gardens are free, this section requires small fee.  It exceeded expectations and should be on the list when visiting the gardens there.

Sydney, Australia

The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

Sydney also has a lovely botanical garden.  While visiting both Australia and New Zealand, the boys particularly enjoyed finding beautiful birds like this White Ibis:

We spent a while wandering the gardens, enjoying both the foliage and the city views.

Taipei, Taiwan

Taipei Botanical Garden

The Taipei Botanical Garden was also quite nice, but after just seeing the Singapore and Sydney gardens, it was a bit of a letdown.  If we would have done our trip in reverse and visited these first, I think I would have been thrilled with it.  There is something to be said for starting small and working up to the grand finale.  I particularly enjoyed the section on different varieties of palm trees.

The ponds were also a hit, and even though we heard a bunch of frogs, we never actually saw them.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch Botanic Gardens

It took us a while to figure out which things in Christchurch we should see.  For whatever reason, the guide book we had highlighted the wrong things, and we wasted a lot of time on things we didn’t like.  The two things the guide book should have highlighted were the Botanical Gardens and the Canterbury Museum.

Like most of the other botanic gardens in this post, this one is also free, but there are many options for guided tours.  We briefly thought about hopping on one of the punting boats, but after the boys realized they wouldn’t be the ones with the sticks, they quickly lost interest.

Wellington, New Zealand

Wellington Botanic Gardens

In Wellington, we also enjoyed the botanical garden, but we didn’t take many pictures.  The gardens are built on a hill, so we first, we took the cable car to the top and toured the cable car museum.  After studying the map, we were a bit confused, but decided to wander along the “Downhill Path to the City.”  This was our first botanical garden in New Zealand, and we were fascinated by the mix of tropical plants and forest plants.  It had a weird feel of Florida meets Netherlands meets Alaska.  The longer we spent in New Zealand, the more we became accustomed to it.  There was a nice playground, a rose garden, an herb garden, and a bunch of other features that we enjoyed.  Here is a picture of the city from the top:

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