4 things to love about Portugal, from sardines to stars
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(Clockwise from top-left) NASA-grade cork oak forests, sardines in beautiful tins, a star-filled night sky and Portuguese azulejo tiles.
ST PHOTOS: KELVIN CHNG
- Portugal’s cork forests are a renewable industry, harvested every nine to ten years, and the bark is even used by NASA for rocket thermal shields.
- Sardines and azulejos show Portugal’s food and craft culture, with tinned sardines turned into global superfood items and tile art linked to Chinese porcelain.
- Dark Sky Alqueva offers clear night skies in Alentejo, where visitors can see stars and planets, linking Portugal’s nature to the Sunflower Surprise display in Singapore.
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PORTUGAL/SINGAPORE – The Portuguese harmony with nature is alive in productive cork forests that supply insulation for rockets blazing through space, while the galaxies themselves offer a celestial spectacle for stargazers in the land’s pristine dark-sky reserves.
Here are four sensory highlights from The Straits Times’ trip that animate the Sunflower Surprise: Garden By The Ocean display at Gardens by the Bay. The showcase of sun-loving blooms and Portuguese icons runs from Oct 9 till Nov 9.
1. NASA-grade cork forests
Cork bark, which is harvested without felling the trees, is not only used to make wine stoppers but also deployed as heat shields in rockets.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
Portugal’s vast cork oak forests, or montados, are eco-miracles. The bark is harvested every nine to 10 years without felling the trees, nurturing a multigenerational industry that positions Portugal as the world’s top exporter of cork oak bark.
At the Herdade da Maroteira estate, white numbers are painted on the trunks – a “6”, for example, marks a tree harvested in 2026 that must remain untouched until 2036.
By law, only two-thirds of the bark may be stripped by expert hands, so the tree flourishes for centuries.
In Singapore, at Gardens by the Bay’s Flower Dome, touch raw cork panels supplied directly by the estate from the sunny plains of Alentejo and picture an ancient, renewable material of wonderful contrasts.
While cheap plastic wine stoppers shorten a bottle’s lifespan to three years, natural cork breathes, letting premium vintages age gracefully for decades.
This elastic bark is also resilient enough to be deployed by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration in thermal shields in rockets exploring the cosmos.
2. Playful sardines, superfood trend
Sardines in beautifully designed tins are a global superfood with humble origins in Portugal.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
In Portugal, fresh, oil-rich charcoal-grilled sardines, redolent of summer, are a street-food favourite showing the ocean’s abundance.
Historically, this marine bounty was preserved to survive lean times, giving rise to conservas – sardines packed in beautifully designed tin cans.
Once a humble staple, this tinned food has transitioned into an upscale, globally sought-after superfood.
Gardens by the Bay commissioned dozens of empty vintage cans, hand-carried from Portugal, to decorate a shop replica at the Flower Dome.
At another display, peer skywards at 200 bespoke ceramic sardines, each painted in a playful pattern. Only a single, special fish resembles a realistic, silver-scaled sardine.
3. Why azulejos are global
For Sunflower Surprise, Viuva Lamego, a Portuguese ceramics house, shipped a ceramic panel covered with sunflower motifs.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
The ceramic tiles (azulejos) blanketing Lisbon’s facades are a global canvas.
While the craft travelled from 12th-century Persia, Portugal’s blue-and-white tile boom was sparked by a 17th-century fascination with Chinese Ming Dynasty porcelain – an artistic bridge linking the European streetscapes to Asia.
For Sunflower Surprise, Gardens by the Bay collaborated with Viuva Lamego, a Portuguese ceramics house founded in 1849 that has clad metro stations everywhere from Paris to Mexico City and Sydney.
The factory shipped over a traditional-style tile panel decorated with stylised sunflower motifs to stand as an interactive hot spot in the Flower Dome.
In Portugal, we tried the delicate art of tile-painting at the atelier, which treats colour with total devotion – it has 72 catalogue hues, including 21 shades of white alone.
4. Starry night sky
The night sky above the Alentejo plains reveals galaxies and new stars.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
On the silent plains of the Alentejo region in the south, light pollution vanishes so galaxies can sparkle. Here, Dark Sky Alqueva is the world’s first Starlight Tourism Destination designated as such by the UNESCO-backed Starlight Foundation in 2011.
To look up is to trace the celestial lights that guided Portuguese ships across unmapped oceans.
On an inky night at the Sao Lourenco do Barrocal luxury sanctuary and family-run farm, we gathered within the stone walls of an ancient, abandoned apiary. Guided by astronomer Frederico Arez, we peered through high-powered telescopes to observe creation in its luminosity.
The universe is seen in brilliant resolution: from ice-ringed Saturn to distant stellar “nurseries” where gas clouds form newborn stars.
The encounter mirrors the spirit of Sunflower Surprise. Just as sunflowers track the sun across the daytime sky, our eyes turn heavenward to a wondrous universe.
Book It/Sunflower Surprise: Garden By The Ocean
Where: Flower Dome, Gardens by the Bay, 18 Marina Gardens Drive
When: Oct 9 to Nov 9; 9am to 9pm daily
Admission: From $8 for residents
Info: www.gardensbythebay.com.sg/sunflower