Calcutta: Parks and Gardens

The Indian Botanical Gardens are located close to Kolkata in Shibpur at Howrah. They were previously called as “The Royal Botanical Garden, Calcutta” and commonly called as “Calcutta Botanical Garden.”

This garden is spread over an area of 109 hectares with a total collection of more than 12,000 specimens and a wide variety of rare plants.

The main attraction of this park is The Great Banyan which is a very large banyan tree that has a circumference of more than 330 meters and this is regarded as the largest tree in the world. This garden is also popular due to the immense collections of palms, bamboos, orchids and plants of the screw pine genus.

The best method to reach this place is to take a ferry service from Bichali Ghat in Metiabruz. In 1793, the botanist William Roxburgh became the superintendent of this garden and he created an extensive herbarium by procuring plants from all over India which became the Central National Herbarium