The joy of an unmanicured space

Living in the overcrowded and highly built-up environment that the land scarce and overpopulated island-state of Singapore has become, there is no better joy than that immersing oneself in green and untamed surroundings brings. Although less common in a country obsessed with creating planned and overly manicured urban spaces, there thankfully are still seemingly wild public spaces, although man-made, that does provide that much-needed respite from the madness of the urban world.

One such space, as is seen in the accompanying photographs, is UpperPeirceReservoirPark, on the fringes of the Central Catchment Reserve. One of the less accessible parks found by the cluster impounding reservoirs in central Singapore, the park with the body of water it has been set-up next to, is where one can discover a tranquillity absent in the overcrowded public spaces we seem to have too many of.

Having opened when I was living in not so far away Ang Mo Kio, the park to which I would often ride a bicycle, has long served as an escape for me. Complementing the beautiful body of water that is the Upper Peirce Reservoir, the park is where one can sit in the shade of the now mature trees and hear the rustle of dried leaves below one’s feet.

Created through the construction of a 30 metre high and 350 wide dam and four smaller dams upstream from the Lower Peirce dam over a period of two years from May 1972 to May 1974, the reservoir was officially opened by Singapore’s then Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew in February 1977. With a storage capacity of some 27.8 million cubic metres and a surface area of 304 ha, the reservoir is in fact Singapore’s largest impounding reservoir, stretching from the main dam that also separates it from Lower Peirce Reservoir some 3.5 kilometres westwards as the crow flies, close to the Bukit Timah Expressway. The park, which is accesible via a 1.7 kilometre road in from Old Upper Thomson Road, was opened in May 1979.