Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden

The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in Shibpur, Howrah district, along the western bank of the Hooghly River. The grounds cover more than a hundred hectares and include systematically arranged beds, palm-lined avenues, water tanks, and a dense network of paved pathways.

Colonel Robert Kyd founded the garden in 1787 to gather and test plants with economic value for the British colonial administration. The site was later renamed after Bengali physicist Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, who pioneered work in plant physiology.

Researchers catalog plants in the National Herbarium using international naming systems. Visitors can walk through greenhouses that shelter tropical species from across Asia.

Visitors should wear comfortable shoes, as the pathways are long and sometimes uneven, especially during the monsoon season. A full tour typically takes several hours, so arriving early in the day and bringing water is advisable.

A single banyan tree spreads across several thousand square meters through its network of aerial roots that act like additional trunks. This tree is so expansive that you might mistake it for a small forest from a distance.