Nature's Colony

Great book for anyone living in Singapore who wants a nice comprehensive history of the Botanic Gardens but which also touches on its connection to the broader history of its connection to green policies in Singapore. Well researched and the footnotes offer a wealth of material primary and secondary for anyone interested to follow up on.

There is excellent tying of this work to the broader historiography and promising pushes in the direction of linking the story of the botanic gardens to the larger networks of gardens and science in empire but was more limited in following through on this when the chapters dove into the empirical section. The book was more narrative than analytic, more of a survey than an interpretative and argumentative academic work.