It’s easy to spend all of your time in Singapore focusing on the city’s amazing urban features, from hawker centers and shophouses to the Merlion and Marina Bay Sands. But there are amazing nature opportunities within easy reach. Want to check out the native flora, from obvious stops to hidden gems? Take a look at these six spots. They’re all accessible by MRT — no bus, car, or taxi required.

Gardens by the Bay

One of the newest gardens in Singapore, Gardens by the Bay has quickly grown to be one of the most iconic — in part due to its one-of-a-kind, flower-lined Supertrees. In many ways, Gardens by the Bay feels like both the most remarkable and the least natural of the parks on this list. It’s the most planned…

… and elaborately sculptural.

The landscape is dominated by impressive structures, including two conservatories. The Flower Dome — the largest greenhouse in the world — has rotating floral displays and small permanent garden sections focused on plants from regions such as Australia, South Africa, and the Mediterranean. The Cloud Forest, my personal favorite, takes you on a vertical journey through vegetation native to cloud forests around the world.

There are two reasons that Gardens by the Bay takes up over 900 pictures on my camera roll. First, the park constantly rotates exhibits, ranging from Dale Chihuly glass installations to festive Chinese New Year displays.

What I most love about Gardens by the Bay, though, are the sheer numbers of things in bloom. If you enjoy flowers, this is the place to go.

I would pick Gardens by the Bay for flowers, special exhibits, views of Marina Bay and the Singapore River, and a view into what contemporary garden design can look like. It always has a certain wow factor.

Plan Your Visit to Gardens by the Bay

• MRT Stops: Bayfront (Downtown Line) and Gardens by the Bay (Thomson–East Coast Line).
• Price: The outdoor gardens are free, but the two conservatories — the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest — cost extra (and they’re worth it). Booking tickets in advance will save time.
• Visit Timing: Go early in the day to beat the heat if you want to walk the grounds. There’s a light show at the Supertree Grove every night at 7:45 and 8:45 if you want a very different park experience.
• What to Wear: Bring layers if you’re planning to visit one or both of the conservatories — they can get surprisingly chilly.
• For Kids: Gardens by the Bay has the best free water-play garden in all of Singapore. Bring a suit and a towel!
• Snacks: There are multiple dining options, but they’re mostly chains (think Shake Shack and Starbucks). All of the cafes get wickedly crowded at lunchtime.

Singapore Botanic Gardens

If Gardens by the Bay is the new kid on the block, then Singapore Botanic Gardens is the queen dowager. This is the grand dame of the Singapore parks, the oldest and most established of them all. Established in its current location in 1859, it’s had plenty of time to grow and develop. So while it still feels planned, trees tower overhead …

… and the vegetation often feels more dense and wild.

One of the biggest draws here is the National Orchid Garden.

This is another heavy-hitter on the flower scene (and a big reason that I have over 700 photos from the Botanic Gardens on my phone). If orchids are your thing, there’s no better place to be.

And while orchids are the stars of the show here, there are plenty of other plants on site: think bananas and gingers, hibiscus and cacti, water lilies and pitcher plants. You can visit wetlands and a rain forest and a tall trees walk. You can have fun just looking at tiny pineapples!

Don’t miss the Foliage Garden and the Evolution Garden — they’re tucked away on the park’s northern end.

The Botanic Gardens are also home to a number of stately colonial buildings, many of which host exhibits open to the public — including a Botanical Art Gallery, a Seed Bank, and the Centre for Ethnobotany.

This is one of the best places in all of Singapore, hands down. It’s easy to see why it was designated the country’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Plan Your Visit to the Singapore Botanic Gardens

• MRT Stops: Botanic Gardens (Downtown Line and Circle Line) and Napier (Thomson–East Coast Line).
• Price: The outdoor gardens are free, but the National Orchid Garden has an entrance fee.
• Visit Timing: Go early in the day to beat the heat —and to get in to beat the crowds. The Orchid Garden opens at 8:30.
• What to Wear: Dress lightly and bring sunblock — you’ll be outside for most of your visit, and shade is hit or miss.
• For Kids: The large, free Children’s Garden offers lots of fun play activities.
• Snacks: There are a few dining options, but they’re mostly on the pricey side. Pack water and plan to eat elsewhere.

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Nearby Parks: Dairy Farm, Hindhede, and Rifle Range

This is the one for true nature lovers. You can climb the tallest peak in Singapore, look for birds at the quarry, and walk in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace on the short but unbeatable Wallace Trail. There are actually four contiguous parks here — Bukit Timah, Dairy Farm, Hindhede, and Rifle Range — so you can spend many hours hiking to your heart’s content.

Most of the trails here are carefully maintained, yes, but this is as close to real hiking as you’re going to get in Singapore. Don’t expect to get too high — Bukit Timah’s summit is only 164 meters (538 feet) above sea level — but do expect to have a great time seeing the rainforest.

You can look forward to the possibility of wildlife encounters — birders come here for kingfishers and drongos, insect lovers find all sorts of creatures under rotting logs, and a monitor lizard spooked us on our very first visit to the park ten years ago (they’re harmless if you don’t get too close, but we had no idea what we were seeing at the time). Long-tailed macaques are common, wild boars snuffle near dawn and dusk, and Malayan colugos make for a rare but exciting sighting.

You’ll mostly see dense layers of tropical green…

… but keep your eyes out for everything from stingless bee nests to fabulous fungi.

Bukit Timah boasts an amazing diversity of flora and fauna — there’s a reason that Alfred Russel Wallace came here to look for beetles in the 1850s (investigations that eventually helped inform his theories on evolution). This is a truly important place, so much so that it became Singapore’s first nature reserve in 1883 — and it is now one of the few primary rainforests in the country. If you’re ready to put on your hiking shoes, there’s no better place to go.

Plan Your Visit to Bukit Timah

• MRT Stops: Hillview (Downtown Line) and Beauty World (Downtown Line). Hillview gets you to Dairy Farm Nature Park and my favorite access to the summit of Bukit Timah. Beauty World gets you to Rifle Range Nature Park.
• Finding Your Way: There are lots of trails here; keep this NParks map handy.
• Facilities: These are nature parks, but restrooms and vending machines are available at the parking areas. If your entry point is Hillview, I would take advantage of the MRT restroom before you start out.
• Wildlife Encounters: If you see animals on your hike — especially boars or monkeys — stay calm and keep your distance. Do not, under any circumstances, approach a wild boar.
• Trail Options: The Wallace Trail is short, wilder than most, and nearly empty — it’s one of my favorites. The Singapore Quarry trail and the walk to the summit from the Hindhede side both follow wide, open roads. If you summit from the Dairy Farm side, get ready for a lot of stairs!

Southern Ridges

Want to walk above the treetops? Excited to look down on the world from Henderson Waves, Singapore’s tallest pedestrian bridge? If so, the Southern Ridges walk is for you. It’s essentially a trek with lots of bridges, elevated platforms, and forest paths, so you always feel like you’re right there in the middle of nature.

I call this a walk rather than a hike because you’re almost always on manmade surfaces. In a very Singapore way, you get to walk up to ten kilometers (should you so choose) without getting your feet dirty. It’s also an unusual chance to get to experience four very different local parks — the Southern Ridges trail connects Mount Faber Park, Telok Blangah Hill Park, HortPark, and Kent Ridge Park.

As you walk, don’t miss the views from Mount Faber (they’re especially good from the cable car center’s Peek-a-Loo) …

… the flowers of HortPark …

… and the lovely, winding paths of Kent Ridge.

If you want a glimpse into what it’s like to walk the whole thing, you can read my post about the entire 10-K adventure here.

A final warning: if you want to access the Southern Ridges by MRT, be prepared for a real hill at the start. The only direct route to the trail requires climbing many stairs up the side of Mount Faber. At just 94 meters (308 ft), it’s still one of the tallest hills in Singapore — so the stairs make for a quick hike, but a steep one!

Plan Your Visit to the Southern Ridges

• MRT Stop: HarbourFront (North East Line); note the warning above.
• Finding Your Way: It’s helpful to have this official NParks guide along your journey.
• Facilities: Since you’re walking from one park to another, there are plenty of restrooms and vending machines along the way.
• What to Wear: Sturdy shoes and a hat — though you’re in the trees for a lot of the walk, some sections are quite exposed.

Fort Canning

Here’s one for the history buffs! This hillside park was once the most important place in Singapore, home to rulers, artisans, administrators, and soldiers. The area now known as Fort Canning sat at the center of the island’s power for centuries, first under the control of Malay sultans, and then as the nucleus of the British presence in the nineteenth century.

Today, you can walk through time here. Start at the open-air archaeological dig, which looks back at 700 years of human habitation on the hill. Then stroll up to the site of the first Singapore residence of Sir Stamford Raffles, the British “founder” of the country, before wandering downhill to the wall of grave markers from the island’s first Christian burial ground.

The hill became a fort in the mid-1800s, and you can still see remnants of that today — including the Fort Gate at the very top of the park.

Prefer your history indoors (and air-conditioned)? The Fort Canning Heritage Gallery offers a short, well-curated tour through the hill’s history, and the underground Battlebox takes visitors on a journey through the British military headquarters in Singapore on the eve of the Japanese invasion.

But Fort Canning isn’t just about history. It’s about Balinese gates at the Sang Nila Utama Garden …

… and towering tree canopies everywhere.

Ah, the trees of Fort Canning — they are magnificent. The park is home to seventeen Heritage Trees plus many other impressive specimens. I walk Fort Canning at least once a week and never get tired of looking up.

As you wander, don’t miss the mingled scents of the Spice Garden and the meditative sounds of the Water Garden, two of my favorite spots in the park. If you want to dig deeper, my post on the hidden gems of Fort Canning highlights the quiet corners that many visitors miss.

Plan Your Visit to Fort Canning

• MRT Stops: Fort Canning (Downtown Line), Bencoolen (Downtown Line), and Dhoby Ghaut (North-South, North East, and Circle Lines)
• Go Early: Fort Canning is hot, especially after 8:30 a.m. Also, you may find long queues for the much-photographed, Instagram-ready, highly overrated Tree Tunnel.
• Skip Sundays: This park becomes packed on Sundays as people flock to its grassy areas and pavilions on their days off.
• For Kids: There’s a great playground and slide area at Jubilee Park, just next to the entrance to the Fort Canning MRT.
• Snacks: Don’t miss the chance to have coffee and a kouign-amann at Tiong Bahru Bakery’s Fort Canning outlet, housed in the old River Valley Swimming Complex.

Rail Corridor

This one is a hidden gem, beloved by locals and nearly unknown otherwise. But if you love to walk, the Rail Corridor should be on your radar. It stretches nearly twenty-four kilometers from the top of Singapore to the bottom, following a rail line that once connected Singapore to Malaysia. You can still see an old railway station and two truss bridges that once carried railcars on their way.

The railway was built in the early twentieth century to carry both long-distance passengers and goods such as rubber, gambier, and tin. After more than a century of service, the trains stopped running in 2011, and most of the land has since been converted to a pedestrian and bicycle path.

Some of the areas along the sides of the Rail Corridor feel entirely green — the parks system has planted over 37,000 trees and shrubs since 2018 to create a space for wildlife to move through various connected forest habitats.

Other areas — especially toward the south — have a much more urban vibe.

The Rail Corridor is a good place to see both sides of Singapore, both the tamed and the wild. There are some truly stupendous trees, and you’re likely to see some wildlife along the way (a quick scroll through my photo roll reveals everything from dragonflies and songbirds to monkeys and snakes). And it’s the best place in Singapore to take a long, uninterrupted stroll.

You have lots of options for walking the Rail Corridor, but for my money, the prettiest stretch runs between Hillview and Holland Village.

Plan Your Visit to the Rail Corridor

• MRT Stops
  • North: Kranji (North-South Line)
  • Middle: Hillview (Downtown Line); King Albert Park (Downtown Line)
  • South: Buona Vista (East-West and Circle Lines)
• Sun Warning: Bring a hat and plenty of water — facilities are widely spread out along the trail, and much of the Rail Corridor is entirely exposed.
• Skip Weekend Mornings: This is a very popular spot with groups of walkers and bikers, so expect heavy crowds.
• Dining: For a truly Singaporean experience, hop off the trail at the Rail Mall for a meal at Springleaf Prata.

Curious about these parks and ready to explore? Here’s a map of each park and its nearest MRT stops. Put on your walking shoes and enjoy!

Further Singapore Reading

• For a very different kind of nature walk, see my posts on exploring the marine creatures of the intertidal zones at Changi Beach Park and Pulau Hantu.
• Prefer air-conditioning with your marine life? Read my Singapore Oceanarium review to see if it’s worth a visit.
• Want to ride the MRT a bit farther to another Singapore park? Check out my Thomson-East Coast Line journey, which takes you past markets, gardens, and all the way out to East Coast Park.
• Stopping for a cup of coffee and curious about Singapore’s kopi culture? Learn more in my post about the Singapore Coffee Shop Heritage Gallery.