I made a trip down to town recently and I had to post about these few parks that I used to manage. In fact, I was involved in the upgrading of this area above the Tanjong Pagar MRT into a park Tanjong Pagar Ricoh Park.The partial redevelopment was sponsored by Ricoh (Singapore) Pte Ltd back then and hence the park name incorporated the company name into it. Anyway, the planters were not planted with Bauhinia kockiana previously. I wouldn't have selected this species for reasons I mentioned in earlier posts on this beautiful but common climber. To sidetrack a bit, the new purplish leaf flushes looked so pretty.
Anyway, the planter was supposedly planted with Bougainvillea 'Chili Red' although on hindsight, that is not the best cultivar to plant here. A few other cultivars e.g. B. 'Mary Palmer', B. 'Mrs Eva', would have performed better to grow over the trellis to provide shade. Below this trellis were some benches recycled from Ricoh printer cartridges but they have since been removed.
On the other end of the station, one can see the iconic Pinnacle@Duxton in the background.
Just outside the entrance towards Telok Ayer Street is a semi-circular plaza with granite benches. Behind these benches were Heliconia 'Lady Di', which are now showing symptoms of nutrient deficiency, as a result of a lack of regular fertilizing. As mentioned before, Heliconias are heavy feeders and they need to be supplemented with lots of organic fertilizers for its optimal growth. Within those beds were also the Cratoxylum formosum that we conserved as part of the development to provide shade.
