Baldah Garden is one of the oldest botanical gardens established in this part of Bengal. It is rather an old garden; 95 years have passed since its doors are opened for public. Located at Wari, in the old part of the city of Dhaka, it is set up by a private individual.
The naturalist, philanthropist and poet Narendra Narayan Roy Chaudhury, landlord of the Estate of Baldah, established the garden on his own property in 1909. He collected different types of rare plants from almost all over the world from 1909 to 1940.
The total area of the Baldah Garden covers 3.38 acres. The garden is divided into two units. The larger unit is named Cybele after the Greek nature goddess of fertility.
It is roughly rectangular, with the northern side slightly cutting a corner, and measures about 136 metres in length and 76 metres in width. The smaller unit, Psyche meaning ‘soul’, is approximately 100 metres long and 45 metre wide.
Narendra Narayan passionately enriched the garden with rare plant species collected from different parts of the world until his death in 1943. His successors left Dhaka and they were not interested to it therefore further expansion and management of the garden came to a halt.
The garden was handed over to the government of (the then) East Pakistan in 1962 and the Forestry Department took charge of managing the garden. After the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the Department of Forestry of the new government began to work with renewed vigour for its improvement, with the result that most of its past glory has now been restored with the addition of two new greenhouses and modernisation of civil amenities inside the garden.
The Baldah Garden is now managed as a satellite unit of the National Botanical Garden by the Department of Forestry. Since 2004, the control of the gate to the garden has been leased out to a private operator.
The collection of the garden is classified into seven categories – orchids, cacti, conservatory plants, aquatic plants, arboretum, and miscellaneous flora.
The garden has about 15,000 plants representing 672 species. Many of these are exotic and rare plants; perhaps the richest collection of exotic plants in the country is housed in the Baldah Garden. The flora of the garden represents collections from over 50 different countries.
Balda Garden Address:
PS : Balda Bagan, Wari, Dhaka – 1213
Near Rajdhani Super Market, West side of Hatkhola Road.
