Kuala Lumpur Orchid Garden

This guide to the Kuala Lumpur Orchid Garden traces the hilltop's start as an 1888 colonial project, when administrator Alfred Venning cleared scrubland for the city's Sanitary Board and Frank Swettenham named the lake below for his wife. It follows the site through decades as a British retreat before Malaysia planted an orchid garden on that same ground in 1986. The neighboring Hibiscus Garden, home to the national flower, is worth the short walk next door.