Vanda Miss Joaquim: A Bloom from Many Roots
RWAH Confections -Illustrated by YY
Ink+paper, digitally enhanced
In the soft morning light, the Vanda Miss Joaquim catches the sun like silk. Its petals blush from white to lilac, with a golden heart that glows from within. Some may know it as Singapore’s national flower, but behind its gentle grace lies a story of curiosity, courage, and the beauty that blooms when worlds meet.
In the late 1800s, an Armenian woman named Agnes Joaquim tended her garden in Tanjong Pagar with quiet devotion. Orchids were her passion. One day, she crossed two species, Vanda teres and Vanda hookeriana, and created something the world had never seen before.
The flower that emerged was striking: bright, balanced, endlessly blooming. The director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens named it in her honour. It became the first orchid hybrid bred in Singapore, and the first in the world created by a woman.
Perhaps that’s why Vanda Miss Joaquim feels so right for Singapore. It was born of patience and imagination, of blending differences to create something new. Agnes, an Armenian herself, came from a community that had travelled far, who found home in a Southeast Asian port alive with traders, sailors, and storytellers.
Her creation was rooted in this soil of exchange. Two orchids from different lands, nurtured in tropical light, tended by a woman whose heritage and spirit reflected the mix of worlds around her.
It’s easy to see how this little flower came to symbolise the city’s soul- resilient, graceful, and always blooming through change.
In a way, Singapore is a living garden too. It is made not of uniform rows, but layers languages, faiths, foods, and faces growing side by side. Like the tropical gardens of this region, it thrives on balance, not control. Everything has its own rhythm, yet somehow it all comes together.
Across Southeast Asia, you’ll see the same rhythm: cultures mingling and transforming over centuries. The sweetness of palm sugar in Malay kuih, the tang of lime in Thai salads, the intricacies of Javanese batik. Each is the result of encounters that never erased what came before, but let new beauty take root.
The region’s strength has always been its ability to absorb and adapt, to create harmony without sameness.
At RWAH Confections, we think about how something so delicate can be both rooted in tradition and boldly original. Each of our creations begins with ingredients and stories from across Southeast Asia, and reimagines them through a new lens.
Just as Agnes Joaquim’s hybrid orchid was born from curiosity and care, our confections are a small reflection of that same spirit: a dialogue between past and present, between the familiar and the new.