On October 25, the severe cyclonic storm Dana struck the eastern coast of India, bringing torrential rain and high-velocity winds that uprooted trees and electric poles in Odisha and West Bengal. It brought back memories of Cyclone Amphan, which caused massive damage in 2020. West Bengal’s Shibpur botanical garden, one of the largest and oldest botanical gardens in South Asia, was ravaged, with more than 2,000 trees uprooted. Amphan left two empty patches in the garden’s chief attraction, the Great Banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis), recorded as the largest tree specimen in the world in the book of Guinness World Records in 1989. Because of its wide canopy, the more than 250-year-old tree is a forest in itself.
But the banyan has weathered many such storms, including one in 1925 that caused a deadly fungal infection in its main trunk. The trunk was amputated to make the tree survive. Following the devastation caused by Amphan, “efforts are being made to fill up the bald patches by training the prop roots through bamboo stalks filled with earth”, said the present superintendent of the garden, Dr Devendra Singh, who is also Joint Director, Botanical Survey of India (BSI), which is in charge of the heritage property.
A map showing the layout of the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden. | Photo Credit: Botanical Survey of India
In 1907, the historian H.E.A. Cotton (1868-1939) wrote in his Calcutta Old And New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City: “The Royal Botanic Garden (founded in 1786 by the East India Company, by the advice of Colonel Kyd, of the Bengal Engineers, who became its first Superintendent), is situated in the suburb of Howrah on the opposite side of the river [Hooghly] from Calcutta and immediately below the Government Engineering College. The upper entrance gate of the garden… is easily reached by a good road which passes through Howrah and the village of Seebpore….”
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The “good road” is still there, but the entrance is now clogged with illegal shops, hawkers, and shacks with toilets leaning against the garden wall. Buses stop in front of the gate, making access difficult. Once the urban sprawl is left behind, the premises of the garden itself—with acres of leafy arbours, groves, and long vistas of fine trees, creepers, and coppices; exotic flowering plants; and grassy knolls by ornamental sheets of water—still feel like a paradise on earth.
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Renamed the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in 2009, the erstwhile “Company Bagan” (East India Company garden) is “a living repository of 1,377 plant species and tallying to a number of 14,122 plants, including trees, shrubs and climbers, possesses 25 divisions and 24 interconnected lakes…”, to quote from the BSI website. The garden, locally called the Shibpur garden (it is located in Shibpur of West Bengal’s Howrah district), has a rich array of curiosities and attractions. Chief among them are the Great Banyan tree; the “Large Palm House containing rich collection of palms including Lodoicea maldivica (the double coconut palm); …the Giant Water Lily (Victoria amazonica) brought from the Amazon river; …mountain rose or Venezuelan rose (Brownea sp.); Baobab tree…(Adansonia digitata) native of Africa; Rosogolla tree (Chrysohyllum cainito)”; and many more. The mahogany trees that form the avenues were shipped all the way from the West Indies in 1795.
The empty patches left in the Great Banyan following Cyclone Amphan in 2020. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
Captain George King (1840-1909), who took charge as superintendent in 1871, designed the present lay of the garden, which was wrecked by a cataclysmic cyclone in 1864. To stop flooding, he devised a chain of artificial lakes by raising the ground level.
Need of a new vision
Today, proper maintenance of the sprawling garden is hindered by a lack of funds. “There is no specific funding for the garden,” said Dr A.A. Mao, Director, BSI. The budget for the BSI is more than Rs.100 crore for 2024-25, to be divided among its 17 units all over India. The BSI has 11 gardens and 500 acres under its care. Nearly 80 per cent of the budget is spent on staff salary, leaving behind a meagre 20 per cent for the gardens and research. Mao has appealed to Kolkata-based corporate houses like ITC Ltd and CESC for help but none has been forthcoming.
Dr A. A. Mao, Director, BSI, said “There is no specific funding for the garden.” | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
In 2021, a survey conducted by the University of Edinburgh along with the Asia Scotland Trust (AST) and Neeta Subhrajit Das Associates (NSDA), a Kolkata-based architecture firm, concluded that the garden needed a new vision. If its orientation could be changed to environment and climate change, as the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London has done, funds could be tapped more easily. Sandra Botterell, director of marketing and commercial enterprises at Kew Gardens, said that Kew, instead of harping on past glories, is “focused on finding nature-based solutions to end the dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change”.
Reviving Roxburgh House
Plans are underway to restore and reuse the 231-year-old house of William Roxburgh, first superintendent of the Shibpur Botanical Garden in West Bengal.
The Shibpur garden could do the same, aligning itself with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes “tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests”. The fact that the Shibpur garden’s Hooghly water edge continues on to the Sundarbans could be used to boost research on the garden’s mangrove plantation. “One should look at the assets in a futuristic way and not only in a historical way. Community development could bring in funding,” said Neeta Das.
In May and June 2021, a community participation project for the regeneration of the garden held by the BSI, the AST, and Edinburgh University, identified two micro biodiversity hot spots in the garden: areas with a high overgrowth of trees, plants, weeds, and two of the lakes in the grounds. Das suggested that the garden could be turned into a biodiversity hot spot.
Roxburgh House stands abandoned on the banks of the Hooghly at present. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
Such suggestions are not always met with enthusiasm. There have been allegations that the garden is being turned into a park for entertainment and lacks proper governance. Mao denied the allegations while asserting that conservation, experimentation, and education are the goals of the garden even if funding is scarce. “The garden’s ongoing research focusses on several critical areas like the introduction and multiplication of threatened and endemic plants; conservation and multiplication of medicinal plants; propagation of economically important plants; and hybridisation of ornamental plants,” he explained.
Niggling troubles
Troubles are aplenty, many of them workaday but niggling nonetheless. The wall around the 273 acre grounds provides inadequate security. Local residents often climb over the wall, particularly on the Nazirgunj side, near the ferry ghat, and plugging the breaches is not a permanent solution.
The giant water lily (Victoria amazonica) in the Shibpur botanical garden. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
“Trees leaning on the wall often damage it. They cannot be trimmed because environmentalists may scream murder. Even when trees which are uprooted on their own are removed, people think they have been felled,” said Mao. The groundwater level being high, roots do not go deep down. Consequently, trees can topple easily.
Complaints to the authorities about the obstructions at the garden entrance have made no difference. The staff are threatened for daring to complain. There is a plan to replace the old brick wall with a concrete boundary wall in phases, beginning with the main gate section.
The canal on the north of the garden has turned into a clogged drain. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
The canal in the north of the garden has turned into a clogged drain as residents of the apartments on the other side of the wall freely dump garbage in it. Connected to the Hooghly, the canal used to act as a conduit for the 24 garden lakes during high tide, with two sluice gates controlling the water level. Now the canal is filled with sewage, and the sluice gate outside the garden is chock-a-block with waste.
On the north-east side of the garden is what was once the “coolie lines”: hutments meant for gardeners and other staff. Over the years, these dwellings have been appropriated either by relatives of the staff or occupied by encroachers. Close by is a small gate over and above the two main gates of the garden, and security personnel notwithstanding, access through this gate is easy enough. Close to the riverbank and the Nazirganj ferry ghat is a mazar (an Islamic shrine) that came up years ago on the garden’s land. While that shrine remains, an unauthorised parking lot outside it has now been removed. The “coolie line” and the mazar together occupy 4 acres.
The hutments meant for gardeners and other staff have been appropriated either by relatives of the staff or occupied by encroachers. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
These encroachments aside, the Hooghly is rapidly eating into the lands. The mangrove plantation along the riverbank, meant to stabilise it and reduce erosion, already has 5,000 trees. Some drastic measures are needed to contain the river.
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If the Shibpur garden is to survive, it must try out alternative sources of income since gate money is evidently not enough to sustain it. Given its great historical and botanical significance, the garden can revamp itself by focussing on entertainment and education. Making provisions for family entertainment could bring in revenue. So long as the garden is not turned into an amusement park and research is not back-burnered, improved amenities can only add to the attractions of the garden.
Soumitra Das is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.
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