Therapeutic garden opens in West Coast Park with seniors’ zone, kids’ play area

SINGAPORE – The Republic’s second-largest therapeutic garden, featuring fragrant, edible or brightly coloured plants, opened in West Coast Park on Sept 12. 

The garden, situated near the park’s carpark 2, has wide pathways that wheelchair users can easily navigate and a community space for horticulture programmes, such as leaf collage and scent-bag making, among other features.

Therapeutic gardens help people interact with nature to improve their well-being, including those with dementia or special needs. 

The new garden at West Coast Park covers an area of 7,600 sq m, which is slightly larger than a football field. It is split into a zone for seniors, with exercise area and raised planters, and a zone for children, featuring a sand play area and relaxation spots that can serve as quiet hideouts. 

Trees in West Coast Park that have been there for more than 40 years have been incorporated into the design, including a majestic 12m-tall Banyan tree, which separates the zone for seniors and the kids’ play area.

The garden is filled with plants, including the lemon sherbert coleus, which has soft, hairy leaves that leave a lemon scent on your hands if you touch them.

Singapore now has 15 therapeutic gardens, with the largest at Woodlands Health Campus covering 1.5ha (about two football fields). The first was developed in HortPark in 2016.

By 2030, there will be 30 therapeutic gardens scattered across the island. 

This is being planned even as the National Parks Board (NParks) continues to restore various areas to their natural uncultivated state through rewilding.

NParks also uses multi-tiered planting to recreate habitats similar to those found in forests, from shrubs to small fruit-bearing trees to bigger trees.

Gone are the days when the emphasis was clearly on maintaining manicured gardens, NParks group director for parks Chua Yen Ling told The Straits Times on Sept 12.

She said recent research has shown that people are looking for more natural green spaces, and this was something that became apparent during the pandemic, when people visited green spaces that were off the beaten path.

Before the end of 2024, another therapeutic garden will open in Punggol Park, said Minister for National Development and Minister-in-charge of Social Services Integration Desmond Lee in a Sept 12 release.

These gardens are designed to not just engage the senses but also provide mental relief, he said.

Mr Lee was at the opening of the West Coast Park therapeutic garden to observe therapeutic horticulture programmes involving teenagers from APSN Tanglin Special School and older adults from Sasco Senior Citizens’ Home. 

Horticultural programmes have been shown to help with the promotion of mindfulness or improvement of motor skills, among other benefits.

NParks offers these programmes at the various therapeutic gardens but only for groups of five to 10 persons, and

bookings

have to be made at least a month in advance.

During a tour of the garden on Sept 12, Ms Chua said the community urban farm run by social enterprise City Sprouts, which opened at West Coast Park in June, can also run such programmes at the garden.

NParks said it consulted community care organisations for the development of the therapeutic garden.

That was how Mr Andy Ang, a senior manager at APSN Tanglin School, found himself at the launch with a group of 18 teenagers from the special education school.

He was testing the waters with the visit, he said, and was happy that the students, some of whom have autism spectrum disorder and others mild intellectual disability, enjoyed the garden.

The sand play feature was also a hit with some of them, who were seen digging into the sand bowl with their hands to feel the sand running through their fingers.