Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden

Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden
Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden

Bangkok, August 22, 2025: Thailand's capital is a city of surprises. When you think you have seen everything, from the Labyrinth of Street Food stands to glittering temple umbrellas, a brave green vision over the skyline appears.

Enter the new Sieben-Rai roof garden in Bangkok's Dusit Central Park, which is today the largest of its kind. This urban oasis swims high above the historic silom district and is not just a pretty piece green. It is a powerful symbol for what could be Bangkok: livable, breathable and beautifully reolvested.

Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden
Breathtaking views of 7 RAI (11,200 m²) of the room on the roof next to the Lumpini Park.

Set over 4. to 7TH Floors of the mixed usage development, this 11,200 square meter sanctuary for the public on September 3, 2025. And for those of us who have complained about the concrete spread of the city for a long time, this is indeed welcome news.

Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden
The garden is now crowning a modern skyline.

A garden with a mission

The garden was developed by Vimarn Suriya Co and is part of the ambitious THB46-Milliarden-Dusit Central Park project, an integrated retail, office, hotel and residential center. But what distinguishes this retreat on the roof is not his scale, but his soul.

The garden is planted exclusively with the local Thai flora, which is carefully selected for a high oxygen output and the carbon absorption. Add to these wheelchair-friendly ramps, the waterfall functions, the QR-coded educational zones and shady sidewalks, and you have more than one garden. You have a room with intention, inclusiveness and effects.

Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden
Suphajee Suthumpun, CEO by Dusit Thani public society limited.

Suphajee proudly explains that the concept of the “Universal Design” garden follows and ensures accessibility for everyone. But what impressed me the most was the ethos of the garden. Here we not only see an allusion to environmental protection, but also a deeply rooted attempt to bring life, humans, plants and culture back to the city center.

A greedy city green

Bangkok has never been known for spacious green areas. In the last count, the average Bangkokian had access to only 3.3 m² of public green. Compare that with a whopping 66 m² per person in Singapore, and the contrast is strong.

It wasn't always like that. Silom, where this garden is now crowning a modern skyline, was once a busy commercial and social center. Over the years, however, it lost the soil to hipper, Glossier districts such as Sukhumvit and Thonglor. Office towers emptied, the buyers scattered and the pulse of the neighborhood dimmed. But with the new roof garden as a crown jewel, there is hope that Silom's heart could beat again.

Lessons of the neighbors

The graphics offer a look at the design letter. I couldn't help but think about Singapore and, like her iconic gardens from the bay, not only changed the riverside promenade of the city, but also their way of thinking. Today the city state is the figurehead for green urbanism. Trees are not a subsequent thought; They are a design philosophy.

The Kingdom Bhutan offers the Kingdom of Bhutan closer to nature (and my heart) another lesson. With over 70% of its country covered in forest, Bhutan not only protects its landscape. It promotes its identity. The latest developments in the south of Bhutan have shown how even new urban areas can be planned in nature. The Kingdom of Bhutan, world-famous for the creation of the concept of the coarse National Happiness (GNH) and the first carbonnegative country, is now starting the gelphu mindfulness, a connected bridge of sustainable development between southern and Southeast Asia.

Of course, Bangkok could never reach Bhutan's amazing forest ratio, but that's not the point. What we can borrow is the principle: this quality of life, not just trade or specifically, should lead urban planning.

If I were a city planner

Bangkok is my adopted home. Since my arrival in 1991 I have seen how it rises, spread out and shifts. I celebrated its dynamics and sometimes sighed over chaos. So if I were given a day in the shoes of a city planner, I would start with three words: trees, water, lawn areas. As big and expansive as possible, like Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London. I miss grass. Walk stroll, jog or play ball/practice. I miss the smell and softness under my feet. Imagine a city in which every neighborhood had its own pocket park or its own garden on the roof, in which shaded hiking trails and channels (our unloved Klongs) have a green space with the next connected where food stands and family-friendly playgrounds are embedded next to Lotus ponds, whereby Bangkok's Millions did not have to flee to find Lumpini or Chatuchak.

We have to think vertically, but also horizontally. Let us create green corridors that cut through the gray. And let's not forget the water. Our rivers and channels, which are so often neglected, could be transformed into living urban features. Floating gardens, pedestrian -friendly embankments or amphitheater on the water. These are not utopian dreams. They are practical options, come from cities that dared to rethink their relationship with space.

Change plants

The challenge is clear: Bangkok has more cars than residents, relentless development pressure and a climate that requires shadows and non -shady skyscrapers.

Bangkok will soon have a model on the roofs of double strength: a space that connects nature, accessibility, culture and calm. And now we have the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), which have an increasing willingness to innovate.

The next step? Make it politics. Introduce environmentally friendly incentives for the building, mandate roof gardens for significant developments and expand the school and hospital gardens. Don't let us make green a luxury, but rather a bourgeois law.

The new roof garden is more than a park. It is a signal that listens to Bangkok and takes into account his people, his past and potential. It offers a high harbor in a city that too often forgets to look up, breathe, rest.

If we do not treat it as an isolated success, but as a springboard for a broader change, we don't just plant trees. We plant a future: a leaf, a way, a cool shady bench at the same time.

Heavenly hopes for Bangkok's new garden

About the author
Andrew J. Wood is a respected travel clerk, hotelier and tourism lecturer with over four decades of experience in the field of hospitality and tourism in Southeast Asia. Andrew, former general manager of several leading hotels in Thailand, came here with the Shangri-La Hotel Bangkok in 1991 and has stayed in Thailand since then. He worked with Royal Garden Resorts (now Anantara) and the Landmark Group of Hotels. He was General Manager at the Royal Cliff Group and the Chaophya Park Hotels & Resorts. He is a former President of Skål International Asia, Thailand's national president and two -time president of the Skål International Bangkok. Andrew regularly contributes to the leading regional and global travel publications and remains a passionate lawyer for sustainable tourism oriented by humans.

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