Tropical vs Temperate Gardens: Two Climates, Two Garden Cultures
The fundamental condition of gardening in the tropics is abundance: in a climate where rainfall is plentiful and temperatures never fall below a threshold that stops growth, plants grow at a speed and scale that temperate gardeners find difficult to imagine. The fundamental condition of temperate gardening is negotiation: with frost, with dormancy, with the annual compression of the growing season into a brief window of warmth. These different conditions have produced two distinct garden cultures, each with its own aesthetic, its own maintenance logic, and its own relationship to the natural world.
Explore tropical and temperate gardens worldwide on the map.
Gardens by the Bay, Singapore: the engineered tropical garden
Gardens by the Bay in Singapore is the most ambitious attempt in history to engineer a designed landscape in a continuously hot and humid climate. The challenge is not how to make things grow — in Singapore's equatorial climate, the challenge is selective restraint. The Supertrees — 18 vertical structures between 25 and 50 metres tall, clad in around 162,900 plants representing 200 species of ferns, orchids, bromeliads, and tropical climbers — require constant management to prevent the fastest-growing species from smothering slower- growing neighbours.
The two cooled conservatories represent the opposite challenge: keeping a Mediterranean and desert environment cool in a climate where outdoor temperatures rarely fall below 25 degrees Celsius. The Flower Dome, which replicates a cool- dry Mediterranean environment, and the Cloud Forest, which mimics a cool-wet montane tropical environment, are maintained at temperatures between 18 and 25 degrees Celsius using an advanced district cooling system that recovers thermal energy from the Marina Bay integrated resort. The energy cost of maintaining cool environments in a hot climate is one of the central tensions of tropical botanical garden design, and Gardens by the Bay has been transparent about it.
The Eden Project's biomes: importing climate
The Eden Project in Cornwall, which opened in 2001 in a former china-clay quarry near St Austell, inverts the Singapore challenge: it creates warm and tropical environments in a temperate maritime climate. The Rainforest Biome — 55 metres high, 100 metres wide, 200 metres long — contains plants from the Malaysian rainforest, West Africa, and the tropical Americas, kept at a minimum 18 degrees Celsius year-round through a passive heating system that captures solar gain through the transparent ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) cushion panels.
The Mediterranean Biome, at a smaller scale, maintains a warm-dry environment for olive trees, citrus, grapevines, and South African fynbos. The energy use of the biomes — particularly in winter, when Cornwall's latitude means little solar gain — has been a subject of ongoing scrutiny and improvement. The Eden Project publishes annual sustainability reports covering energy consumption and offset programmes.
Nong Nooch, Thailand: tropical maximalism
Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden near Pattaya, established in 1980, covers 600 acres of low hills in eastern Thailand and demonstrates the tropical garden at its most exuberant. The French garden, an immense formal parterre of tropical bedding plants maintained by a large horticultural team, uses the rapid growth of the tropical climate to create pattern effects in weeks that would take months in a temperate garden. The Stonehenge replica in local stone, the European garden section, and the collection of over 670 Cycas species (the largest in the world) illustrate the ambition and eclecticism of tropical garden design at its most maximalist.
Peradeniya, Sri Lanka: the colonial botanical tradition
The Royal Botanic Garden at Peradeniya, near Kandy in central Sri Lanka, occupies one of the most beautiful sites of any botanical garden in Asia: a bend in the Mahaweli Ganga river, surrounded by forested hills. Established in 1821 by the British colonial administration, Peradeniya holds collections that reflect both the scientific agenda of the colonial botanical network (rubber, tea, and quinine were among the plants whose regional cultivation was advanced through experiments here) and the pleasures of a great landscape garden in a tropical setting. The avenue of Royal Palms (Roystonea regia), the fig tree collection (whose aerial roots form a 25-metre canopy from a single specimen), and the orchid house are the signature features.
Royal Botanic Garden Sydney: the temperate/subtropical boundary
The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, on Farm Cove in Sydney Harbour, sits on the boundary between temperate and subtropical climate zones, allowing it to grow plants from both regions in the open air. The palm lawn contains Livistona australis, Archontophoenix, and Pritchardia species growing at a latitude where they need heated glasshouses in European gardens. The tropical centre glasshouse extends the range further. The garden's position demonstrates the advantage of the subtropics over temperate zones for horticultural ambition: a wider range of plants can be grown without supplementary heat, and the growing season is effectively year-round.
Aburi Botanical Garden, Ghana: the West African tradition
The Aburi Botanical Garden, established in 1890 in the Akuapem hills 30 kilometres north of Accra at 450 metres elevation, is the most important botanical garden in West Africa. The cooler hill climate allows plants from across tropical Africa to be grown more successfully than in the hot, humid coast below. The garden's collection of African tropical trees, its historic avenue of mahogany, and the rubber plantation established in the colonial period as a crop trial give the site layers of economic and botanical history. Like many botanical gardens in developing countries, Aburi faces funding constraints that limit maintenance but do not diminish the historic collection.
Foster's Garden (Honolulu Botanic Gardens), Hawaii: the volcanic island garden
The Honolulu Botanic Gardens, comprising five distinct gardens on the island of Oahu, includes Foster Botanical Garden in the city centre — a 13.5-acre garden on land leased from Queen Kalama in the 1850s and planted with trees that are now among the largest of their species in the United States. The prehistoric glen (with palms and cycads), the orchid and economic section, and the exceptional canopy trees (including a Pterocarpus indicus with a canopy spread of 75 feet) make this a remarkable colonial-era botanical garden in a tropical city setting.
Limbe Botanic Garden, Cameroon
The Limbe Botanical and Zoological Garden in Cameroon, established in 1892 on the slopes of Mount Cameroon, is one of the oldest and most significant botanical gardens in sub-Saharan Africa. Its position on the lower slopes of Africa's most active volcano, in one of the wettest places on earth, means that growth is extraordinary: century-old specimens of African tropical trees have reached dimensions rarely seen even in primary forest. The garden's role in the conservation of the Gulf of Guinea's endemic plant species — one of Africa's most threatened biodiversity hotspots — is its scientific priority.
The energy debate: cooling and heating
The central ethical tension in the creation of enclosed tropical or temperate environments in non-native climates — whether the Flower Dome in Singapore or the Temperate House at Kew — is the energy cost of maintaining those microclimates. Heating a Mediterranean environment in Yorkshire or cooling a cloud forest in Singapore requires continuous energy input. The debate within botanical garden management circles increasingly focuses on whether the visitor experience and conservation research value of these structures justifies their carbon footprint, and on the technical improvements (heat pumps, waste heat recovery, solar thermal collectors) that can reduce it.
Use the map to explore tropical and temperate gardens across the world and compare what different climates make possible.