A vertical garden in Singapore is not a novelty stuck on a wall. It is part of how the city is planned. Hotels wear terraced sky gardens, office towers hide four-storey forests halfway up, an airport wraps a 40-metre indoor waterfall in a terraced jungle, and steel Supertrees covered in ferns and orchids rise up to 50 metres over Marina Bay. Few places on earth have pushed greenery up the sides of buildings as far, or as fast.
This guide explains why Singapore builds this way, how its vertical gardens actually work in a hot, wet climate, and the 12 buildings that show the idea best, from Gardens by the Bay and Jewel Changi Airport to Oasia Hotel Downtown, CapitaSpring and Kampung Admiralty. We also cover the rules and incentives behind the greenery, the real challenges of keeping plants alive 200 metres up, and answers to the questions people ask most. If you are drawing a green building of your own, our free architectural cutouts include palm trees and botanical trees to bring tropical planting into your renders.
Vertical gardens in Singapore at a glance
- What they are: planted facades, green walls, sky terraces and rooftop gardens built into high-rise buildings, known locally as skyrise greenery.
- Why Singapore: about 6 million people on roughly 735 square kilometres, a tropical climate where plants grow fast, and a national goal, dating back to 1967, of being a city of greenery.
- Key policies: URA’s LUSH programme (2009), NParks’ Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme (2009), BCA Green Mark (2005) and the Singapore Green Plan 2030.
- Target: 200 hectares of skyrise greenery by 2030.
- Must-see examples: Supertree Grove, Cloud Forest, Parkroyal Collection Pickering, Oasia Hotel Downtown, Jewel Changi Airport, CapitaSpring, Kampung Admiralty and the Tree House condominium.
- Free to see: the outdoor gardens and Supertree Grove at Gardens by the Bay, the Rain Vortex at Jewel, and the facades of Pickering and Oasia from the street.
Why Singapore Is the World Capital of Vertical Gardens
Singapore has called itself the “Garden City” since 1967, when then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew launched a tree-planting drive to make the young, crowded island cleaner and cooler. The vision later grew into a “City in a Garden” and, since 2020, a “City in Nature”. What changed over those decades is where the greenery goes. With land scarce and towers getting taller, the obvious place left to plant was up.
Vertical gardens, a key part of Singapore green architecture, are the result. They climb the sides of skyscrapers and housing blocks, spill from sky terraces and cover rooftops. They are not only there to look good. By making the most of limited space, they create shade and habitat in a densely populated city, cool hard surfaces and help reduce the urban heat island effect. Building greenery into the urban fabric is one of the clearest signs of Singapore’s commitment to a sustainable, liveable city.
The idea goes well beyond planting greenery on walls. It involves a close interplay of architecture, horticulture and urban planning. Architects and planners work with horticulturists and botanists to choose species that cope with wind, sun and shade at height, so the gardens are both striking and ecologically resilient. Much of it builds on older tropical wisdom. Deep verandahs, shaded loggias and cross-ventilation, seen in Singapore’s colonial black and white bungalows and in projects such as this Residence in Singapore by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, have always used shade and air movement to make the climate bearable. Today’s green towers simply stack those ideas dozens of storeys high.
How Vertical Gardens Work in Singapore’s Climate
Singapore sits just north of the equator. It is hot and humid all year, with heavy rain spread through the seasons, and many tropical plants grow fast. That makes vertical greening easier than in a temperate city, but not easy. Sun, wind and dry spells are harsher 30 storeys up than at street level, and a single failed irrigation pump can kill a wall in days. Singapore’s projects tend to use four main systems:
- Green facades with climbers: creepers grow up mesh, cables or trellises from planters at the base or on each floor. Oasia Hotel Downtown is the best-known example. They are cheaper and hardier than living walls but take a few years to fill in.
- Living walls: modular panels or felt pockets planted with ferns, foliage plants and groundcovers, fed by drip irrigation. They give an instant, dense carpet of green, as at the Ocean Financial Centre, but need more maintenance.
- Planter boxes and cascading greenery: deep planters on balconies and ledges let shrubs, palms and trailing plants spill over the edge, like the hanging gardens of Parkroyal Collection Pickering.
- Sky terraces and roof gardens: whole floors given over to soil, trees and paths, such as CapitaSpring’s Green Oasis or the rooftop park at Kampung Admiralty.
The role of technology in vertical gardens
Technology plays a crucial role in keeping these gardens alive. Automated drip irrigation delivers precise amounts of water to each planter, cutting waste and keeping roots healthy, while rain sensors switch systems off during downpours. Many buildings collect rainwater or use NEWater, Singapore’s recycled water, for irrigation. At Parkroyal Collection Pickering, rainwater from upper floors flows down to water the planters below by gravity. Sensors and monitoring systems track moisture and plant health so maintenance teams can act before disease or pests take hold.
Digital tools shape the design too. Architects use sun, wind and computational fluid dynamics modelling to see how planting will affect shade, airflow and comfort, and to place each species where it will thrive. Drawings matter as much as software. A good architectural section drawing is the clearest way to show how soil depth, structure, irrigation and planting stack up through a green tower, while an axonometric drawing can explain in one view how planters, maintenance walkways and structure fit together. Pair them with an elevation drawing to show how the planting reads across a whole facade.
12 Iconic Vertical Gardens and Green Buildings in Singapore
Several iconic buildings show how far Singapore has taken the idea. They range from public gardens and an airport to hotels, offices, hospitals and public housing. Here are the 12 that best explain how vertical gardens in Singapore work.
1. Supertree Grove, Gardens by the Bay
Gardens by the Bay opened in 2012 on 101 hectares of reclaimed land beside Marina Bay, and its Supertrees have become the symbol of the city. Designed by landscape architects Grant Associates, the 18 Supertrees stand between 25 and 50 metres tall. Each is a steel frame wrapped in planting panels that hold more than 162,900 plants of over 200 species, including bromeliads, orchids, ferns and tropical climbers. They are working structures too: some carry photovoltaic cells, some collect rainwater and some act as exhaust vents for the conservatories’ cooling system. The 128-metre OCBC Skyway links two of them 22 metres above the ground. Our list of the top architectural wonders of the 21st century ranks the gardens among the most important projects of their era.
2. Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, Gardens by the Bay
Next to the Supertrees sit two giant cooled conservatories designed by WilkinsonEyre with Grant Associates. The Flower Dome, about 1.2 hectares under glass, was recognised by Guinness World Records in 2015 as the largest glass greenhouse in the world. The Cloud Forest is the more dramatic vertical garden. Its centrepiece is the Cloud Mountain, a man-made peak clad in orchids, ferns, mosses, pitcher plants and bromeliads, with a 35-metre waterfall pouring down its face and walkways that take you up through the misty planting. It shows how a vertical garden can recreate a whole ecosystem, in this case the cool tropical montane forests found 1,000 to 3,000 metres above sea level.
3. Parkroyal Collection Pickering
Completed in 2013 by Singapore practice WOHA, this hotel and office complex (opened as Parkroyal on Pickering) is a standout example of a “hotel in a garden”. Its contoured concrete podium, inspired by rice terraces and rock formations, flows out of Hong Lim Park opposite, and four-storey sky gardens are carved out of the towers above. In all, the building contains about 15,000 square metres of sky gardens, planter terraces, reflecting pools, waterfalls and green walls, roughly double the area of its site. Every one of its 367 rooms looks onto greenery. Rainwater irrigates the planters by gravity, solar panels power the garden lighting, and naturally ventilated corridors cut energy use. The project earned Singapore’s top Green Mark Platinum rating and set a benchmark for green hotels worldwide.
4. Oasia Hotel Downtown
If Pickering is a garden on terraces, WOHA’s Oasia Hotel Downtown (2016) is a tower wearing a living coat. The 27-storey, roughly 190-metre building in Tanjong Pagar is wrapped in red and pink aluminium mesh, and 21 species of creepers, planted in 1,793 planter boxes, climb over it. Species were placed by how much sun and wind they can take and how fast they grow, so the facade fills in as a patchwork that changes with the flowering seasons. Inside, instead of a sealed glass box, the tower has four open, breezy sky terraces. Its green plot ratio is about 1,100%, meaning the planted area is roughly 11 times the site area. Oasia was named Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in 2018. It is also a favourite subject for students, because a series of elevation drawings can show how the green coat has filled in year by year.
5. Jewel Changi Airport
Opened in April 2019, Jewel Changi Airport by Safdie Architects is a glass and steel torus connected to the airport’s terminals. At its heart, the Rain Vortex, the world’s tallest indoor waterfall at 40 metres, pours through an oculus in the roof. Around it the Shiseido Forest Valley, one of the largest indoor gardens in Asia at about 22,000 square metres, steps down four storeys of terraces planted with around 900 trees and palms and some 60,000 shrubs when it opened. Rainwater is collected from the roof and recirculated, and the planting was designed by PWP Landscape Architecture to cope with the light conditions under the glass. It is the clearest proof of the idea in our guide to the design of modern airports: that an airport can feel like a park.
6. CapitaSpring
Completed in 2021, CapitaSpring by Bjarke Ingels Group with Carlo Ratti Associati is a 280-metre, 51-storey tower in Raffles Place that pulls its vertical facade fins apart to reveal gardens at its base, middle and top. Halfway up, at about 100 metres, the Green Oasis spirals through four levels (17 to 20) and 35 metres of height with more than 38,000 plants, open-air workspaces, a café and an amphitheatre. Across the whole building there are over 80,000 plants from more than 130 species, more than half of them native, and a landscaped area equal to 140% of the site. At the top, a sky garden includes a food garden with views over Marina Bay. It shows how a vertical garden can be designed as shared public space, not just decoration.
7. Kampung Admiralty
Not every vertical garden is a showpiece tower. Kampung Admiralty, completed by WOHA in 2017, is a public development in the north of the island that stacks 104 apartments for older residents above a medical centre, hawker centre, childcare and eldercare facilities and shops. Its stepped roof becomes a community park and allotment farm where residents grow vegetables together. The idea is a “vertical kampung”, the Malay word for village, and it won World Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival in 2018. It is perhaps the most important lesson in Singapore green architecture: greenery as everyday social infrastructure.
8. Tree House Condominium
In 2014, Guinness World Records certified the Tree House condominium in Bukit Timah, developed by City Developments Limited and completed in 2013, as having the largest vertical garden in the world at the time: a 2,289-square-metre green wall that climbs 24 storeys up the sides of its blocks. The planted walls shade the facades from the sun, which helps keep the flats behind them cooler and reduces the need for air conditioning. It is a good example of a vertical garden doing quiet, practical work on an ordinary residential building.
9. Solaris, one-north
Designed by Ken Yeang of T. R. Hamzah and Yeang and completed in 2011, Solaris is a research and office building in the one-north business park. Its signature is a continuous landscaped ramp, about 1.5 kilometres long and at least 3 metres wide, that spirals up the facade from the park at street level to roof gardens at the top. The ramp lets plants, insects and birds move through the building as one ecosystem and shades the facade beneath. In total Solaris has about 8,363 square metres of landscaping, more than its 7,734-square-metre site, and it achieved Green Mark Platinum with an energy reduction of more than a third compared with similar buildings.
10. Khoo Teck Puat Hospital
Opened in 2010 in Yishun and designed by CPG Consultants, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital is often described as a “hospital in a garden”. It is built around the restored Yishun Pond, planted terraces cascade down the courtyards, and greenery reaches almost every floor, with fruit trees, herbs and a rooftop farm tended by volunteers. Patients and visitors see and smell plants wherever they go, and the hospital grounds have become a haven for butterflies and birds. It is one of Singapore’s best examples of biophilic design for health.
11. Ocean Financial Centre Green Wall
The Ocean Financial Centre in Raffles Place has one of the largest living walls in the city. Its planted facade at the base of the tower, more than 2,000 square metres of foliage, was recognised by Guinness World Records in 2013 as the largest vertical garden in the world, before the Tree House took the title a year later. Different leaf colours are used to draw a map of Singapore island into the wall, a reminder that a living wall can carry pattern and meaning as well as greenery.
12. Pinnacle@Duxton
Singapore’s public housing joined the movement early. Completed in 2009, the Pinnacle@Duxton by ARC Studio Architecture + Urbanism with RSP is a group of seven 50-storey Housing and Development Board towers linked by two continuous sky gardens on the 26th and 50th floors, each about 500 metres long. They are among the longest sky gardens in the world, giving residents shared lawns, play areas and planting high above the city, and the rooftop garden is open to visitors for a small fee.
Other places worth seeing include Marina One by ingenhoven architects, whose terraced “Green Heart” sits between four towers, and the hanging green walls of Singapore Management University and Changi Airport’s terminals.
Environmental Benefits of Vertical Gardens
One of the main benefits of vertical gardens in Singapore is their effect on the local environment. As cities face climate change, urban heat and air pollution, vertical greenery offers a natural response. Plants shade walls and roofs, and evaporation from their leaves cools the air around them, so planted facades can be many degrees cooler than bare concrete or glass in full sun. That reduces the heat that enters a building, lowers the need for air conditioning and cuts energy use. Leaves also trap dust and absorb some pollutants, which helps air quality in a dense city.
Vertical gardens also support biodiversity. By providing food and shelter, they create stepping stones for wildlife across the city. Birds, butterflies, bees and other insects use these green spaces, and well-planned species mixes with flowering and fruiting plants make them even more valuable. Singapore increasingly favours native species for this reason. This side of Singapore green architecture shows how cities can promote environmental sustainability through design.
Social and Health Benefits
Vertical gardens are not only about the environment. In a fast-paced city, access to green space matters for mental wellbeing. Vertical greenery gives city dwellers a daily visual connection to nature, which research links to lower stress and better mood. Greenery can turn a hard, grey streetscape into a more inviting and human space, encouraging people to linger, meet and talk.
Vertical gardens also support physical health. By cooling the air and improving the environment around buildings, they make streets and homes more comfortable to live in. Studies link exposure to green space with better recovery, lower stress and improved wellbeing, which is why projects such as Khoo Teck Puat Hospital put planting at the heart of their design. In a city where space is at a premium, bringing nature into daily life raises quality of life without giving up the benefits of urban living.
Economic Impacts
The economic case for vertical gardens is strong, which helps explain why private developers in Singapore build them. By reducing energy demand through shading and natural cooling, green facades lower running costs for building owners and tenants. Buildings with distinctive greenery also tend to attract tenants, buyers and guests who value sustainability, and they can help win Green Mark ratings that matter to investors.
Vertical gardens also draw visitors. Gardens by the Bay, Jewel and Parkroyal Collection Pickering are attractions in their own right, and Singapore’s reputation as a leader in green architecture brings designers, students and investors from around the world. Cities such as Copenhagen are pursuing similar goals by other means, as our look at Copenhagen’s climate-friendly design shows. The integration of vertical gardens into Singapore’s landscape shows that sustainability and economic growth can go hand in hand. It is a very different idea of civic grandeur from the gilded domes of Baroque architecture or the polished stone towers of Art Deco: here, the showpiece is the planting.
Challenges of Vertical Gardens and How Singapore Solves Them
The benefits are clear, but vertical gardens come with real challenges. One of the biggest is cost. Planters, waterproofing, structure, irrigation and safe maintenance access all add to the price of a building. Singapore has tackled this through government incentives and public-private partnerships. Under the Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme, NParks co-funds up to 50% of the cost of new rooftop and vertical greenery on existing buildings, and URA’s LUSH programme gives developers floor-area incentives for sky terraces and roof gardens. These make it practical for many more buildings to go green.
Maintenance is the other challenge. Vertical gardens need specialist knowledge and safe access to plants at height, and walls that are poorly maintained quickly look patchy. Singapore has invested in training and certification for skyrise greenery specialists, and designers now build in maintenance walkways and gondola access from the start, as at Solaris and Oasia. Choosing tough, suitable species, testing irrigation, and planning for pests, wind and structural loads are all part of the design. Good projects also accept that planting changes over time and design for that, rather than expecting a wall to look the same forever.
Government Policies Behind Singapore’s Skyrise Greenery
The Singapore government has played a central role in promoting vertical gardens and green architecture. The Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark scheme, launched in 2005, rates buildings on energy, water, environmental impact and greenery, and higher ratings are now expected of new public buildings. The Singapore Green Building Masterplan aims to green 80% of buildings by gross floor area by 2030.
Alongside certification, planning rules support greenery directly. URA’s Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) programme, launched in 2009 and expanded since, requires many new developments to replace greenery lost to their footprint with landscaped areas such as sky terraces, planter boxes and roof gardens, and rewards those that go further. NParks’ Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme, also launched in 2009, has helped more than 200 existing buildings add green roofs and walls. Under the Singapore Green Plan 2030 and its City in Nature vision, the country aims to reach 200 hectares of skyrise greenery by 2030 and plant a million more trees. Together these policies mean vertical gardens are part of the planning system, not just the choice of a few bold developers.
Community Involvement in Vertical Gardens
Community involvement is a key part of successful vertical gardens. In Singapore, residents are encouraged to take part in the care of shared gardens, which builds a sense of ownership and pride. Community gardens and urban farming have grown fast, with rooftop allotments at Kampung Admiralty, edible gardens on housing estate car-park roofs and the volunteer-run farm at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital letting people grow their own food.
This community-driven side of Singapore green architecture strengthens social ties and gives residents an active role in sustainability. When people help care for them, vertical gardens become more than architectural features. They become part of everyday life, promoting environmental stewardship and civic pride.
The Future of Vertical Gardens in Singapore
The future of Singapore green architecture looks promising, and vertical gardens will play an even bigger role. Newer projects treat greenery as public space and productive landscape, with sky farms, biodiversity corridors and shared gardens open to everyone. As climate change brings hotter days, the cooling effect of planting will matter more, and better data from sensors and research will show which species and systems perform best.
Singapore’s example is also spreading. Milan’s Bosco Verticale by Stefano Boeri Architetti brought the vertical forest to Europe, Seattle’s Amazon Spheres put a cloud forest in a workplace, and Heatherwick Studio’s 1000 Trees in Shanghai plants trees on the columns of a whole district. Cities as different as Seoul and Copenhagen are combining technology and greenery in their own ways. For a wider view of how architects have long brought nature into buildings, see our guide to how Japanese architecture balances nature and minimalism.
Singapore’s vertical gardens are more than architectural showpieces. They are a working model of how a dense, hot city can bring nature back into daily life, cool its streets and support wildlife while still growing. With their environmental, social and economic benefits, they show what innovation and long-term planning can achieve, and they offer a guide for cities worldwide that want nature and urban life to coexist.
Vertical Garden Singapore FAQs
What is the largest vertical garden in Singapore?
The Tree House condominium in Bukit Timah was certified by Guinness World Records in 2014 as having the world’s largest vertical garden at the time, a 2,289-square-metre green wall. Before that, the Ocean Financial Centre’s living wall held the title. For sheer scale of planting, Parkroyal Collection Pickering (about 15,000 square metres of sky gardens) and CapitaSpring (over 80,000 plants) are also among the biggest.
Why does Singapore have so many buildings with plants?
Singapore has pursued a “Garden City” vision since 1967. Land is scarce, so greenery has moved up onto buildings. Planning rules such as URA’s LUSH programme require developments to replace lost greenery, incentives such as the Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme help pay for it, and the hot, wet climate lets plants grow fast. Greenery also cools buildings and attracts tenants and visitors.
Is there a law that buildings in Singapore must have plants?
There is no single law requiring every building to be covered in plants. However, URA’s LUSH programme requires many new developments, especially in the city centre and other key areas, to provide landscaped areas such as sky terraces, planter boxes or roof gardens to replace the greenery lost to the building, and it rewards developers who provide more. Green Mark standards and the national goal of 200 hectares of skyrise greenery by 2030 push in the same direction.
What is the most famous vertical garden in Singapore?
The Supertrees at Gardens by the Bay are the most famous, with more than 162,900 plants on 18 steel structures up to 50 metres tall. Among buildings, Parkroyal Collection Pickering and Oasia Hotel Downtown by WOHA are the most celebrated, and the Rain Vortex and Forest Valley at Jewel Changi Airport are seen by millions of travellers every year.
How are vertical gardens maintained in Singapore?
Most use automated drip irrigation linked to rain sensors, often fed by harvested rainwater or recycled NEWater. Trained horticulture teams prune, replace plants and check for pests, reaching high walls by built-in maintenance walkways, gondolas or rope access. Designers choose hardy species suited to the sun, shade and wind at each level, which is the single biggest factor in keeping a vertical garden healthy.
Can you visit Singapore’s vertical gardens for free?
Yes, many of them. The outdoor gardens and Supertree Grove at Gardens by the Bay are free, though the OCBC Skyway, Cloud Forest and Flower Dome are ticketed. The Rain Vortex and much of the Forest Valley at Jewel Changi Airport are free to walk through. You can see Parkroyal Collection Pickering, Oasia Hotel Downtown and the Ocean Financial Centre wall from the street, and the Pinnacle@Duxton rooftop garden charges a small entry fee. Check opening hours before you go.
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