Tun Razak Heritage Park, Kuala Lumpur

Many would not know this park by its present name. It was known as Lake Garden or Tasik Perdana. In 2011 it was renamed as Tun Razak Heritage Park. There are altogether 22 sites within this park. Let me introduce this park to the locals as well as tourist starting with its history.

History

Early in 1888 Frank Swettenham returned to Kuala Lumpur after a period of absence from his post of British Resident, Selangor. Soon after his return A.R. Venning proposed to him that a botanic garden should be laid out in the valley of the Sungei Bras Bras. Venning was the State Treasurer, Selangor, but before coming to Malaya he had been a planter in Ceylon.

Swettenham was a thorough administrator. Before he would give the scheme his support, he and Venning spent several early mornings scrambling up and down the sides of a "valley which consisted of several acres of swamp, in which briars and lallang, forest trees, screw pines and tree ferns were interspersed in picturesque confusion".

Venning then began what his colleagues recognised as a "labour of love". Over a period of nearly ten years he gradually cleared and laid out a garden or park of 173 acres. Shrub and undergrowth were cut down; common trees were replaced by ornamental and flowering trees and shrubs; "an experimental economic garden" was laid out. One hundred white chempaka and orange trees to Venning's initial planting programme of 1888 were planted. A European construction contractor called Gordon undertook to dam up the Sungei Bras Bras so as to make an ornamental lake.

The Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, came on a visit to Kuala Lumpur in May 1889, he declared the gardens open and gave the name "Sydney Lake" to the "fine sheet of water" dammed up by Mr. Gordon. It was so called after Mrs. Swettenham's Christian name. Thus Kuala Lumpur got its Lake Gardens.

So that's the beginning of the park in the center of Kuala Lumpur. Let me walk you through this park with its tropical rainforest setting at its present time.