Valley I
The Orchid Valley
1,084 accessions · home to the only continuously bloomed Vanda Miss Joaquim heritage bed outside the National Orchid Garden.
Yuh Siang Garden · Bukit Timah · Est. 1972
A living museum of Asian horticulture, curated since 1972.
Fourteen hectares of documented Asian flora across six themed valleys, stewarded across three generations of the Lim family and indexed continuously in our quarterly Living Index monograph since 1986.
Chapter I · Provenance
From a former nutmeg estate to a Kew-accredited living herbarium.
In 1972, the botanist Dr. Lim Yuh Siang acquired a neglected spice estate in the Bukit Timah foothills and began converting its terraces into a private collection of Asian flora. Over the following half-century, that collection grew into what is today the largest open-access Asian herbarium in Southeast Asia — 4,217 living species, a Kew-accredited laboratory, and a curatorial team of thirty-eight — all under the continuous stewardship of the Lim family.
The Estate
The original 1972 plantings — including the surviving Penjing Terrace, one of the few colonial-era penjing arrangements still intact in Singapore — remain on view to scholarly visitors by appointment and to members throughout the calendar year.
The Lab
Our on-site herbarium is the only Kew-accredited facility of its kind in Singapore outside the Singapore Botanic Gardens, and one of four in Southeast Asia. Pressed specimens, seed lots, and field journals are catalogued against the Living Index, issued quarterly without interruption since 1986.
The Family
Three generations of the Lim family have now curated the collection. The current custodians — granddaughters of the founder — continue the practice of documenting each accession by hand before it is entered into the index and offered to the seed exchange.
The Six Valleys
Fourteen hectares, six curatorial chapters.
The garden is divided into six themed valleys, each with its own planting brief, microclimate, and accession register. Researchers and landscape architects planning a working visit are encouraged to identify their primary valley in advance; members may request a guided traversal across multiple valleys on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings.
Valley II
The Penjing Terrace
612 accessions · the only surviving colonial-era penjing terrace in Singapore, dating to the original 1972 planting.
Valley III
The Dipterocarp Grove
728 accessions · a regional reference collection of Southeast Asian canopy species, indexed against IUCN conservation status.
Valley IV
The Materia Medica Garden
906 accessions · a working reference of Asian medicinal and ritual flora, cross-referenced to the herbarium lab.
Two further valleys — the Bamboo Glen and the Fern Gully — are accessible to researchers by appointment.
View All Six Valleys“My grandfather planted the first penjing tray in 1972 and wrote the accession number on the underside in pencil. We still use that number. Every plant in this garden can be traced back to a single line of handwriting on the bottom of a ceramic dish.”
Lim Hui-Wen · Third-Generation Custodian, speaking to the BBC Earth documentary unit in 2022
The Living Index · 2024 Edition
A numeric ledger, in the tradition of the quarterly member index.
Each quarter since 1986 we have published a numbered issue of the Living Index, recording every accession, loss, and redistribution in the collection. The figures below are drawn from the 152nd issue, dated March 2024.
4,217
Living species catalogued in the 2024 Living Index
184,000
Annual visitors, deliberately capped to protect the collections
152
Consecutive quarterly issues of the Living Index since 1986
41
Countries served by the open-access seed exchange
6,800
Registered institutional members of the seed exchange
17
IUCN Red List species recovery partnerships active since 2008
Distinctions & Editorial
A curatorial record, cited in the international press.
The garden has been recognised by the International Botanical Congress and featured in leading travel and natural-history publications. Citations below are reproduced verbatim from the awarding bodies and editorial offices concerned.
2023
Garden of the Year, Asia-Pacific
International Botanical Congress · awarded for the second time, the first being 2019.
2023
40 Most Beautiful Gardens in Asia
Condé Nast Traveller · listed among forty gardens selected by the editorial team.
2022
Gardens of the Spice Route
BBC Earth documentary · featured as the principal Singapore location for the four-part series.
2019
Garden of the Year, Asia-Pacific
International Botanical Congress · first of the garden's two biennial awards.