The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in Howrah does not have the clinicality one associates with any address of science. Some things have been allowed to grow wild, and then there are other patches that are plotted and pruned and manicured. All in all, it is difficult to believe that these 270 acres of greenery contributed more useful and ornamental tropical plants to the public and private gardens of the world “than any other establishment before or since”, as wrote botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in his 1854 book, Himalayan Journals.

It all began with one missive. “I take this opportunity of suggesting to the Board [of directors of the East India Company] the propriety of establishing a Botanical Garden... which ultimately may lead to the extension of the national commerce and riches,” wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Kyd in a letter to the Governor-General in 1786. Kyd suggested that the garden be used to grow cinnamon, cloves and pepper.

At the time, the Dutch ruled the spice trade. Greedy to tap into into spice lucre, the East India Company accepted Kyd’s suggestion with alacrity. He was named superintendent of the proposed garden. And in 1787, the vast acreage to the south of Kyd’s garden house in Shalimar was procured for the purpose.

In an email from London, Richard Axelby of the School of Oriental and African Studies tells The Telegraph, “Supporters of the Empire saw India as a place of wild nature that needed to be ‘tamed’… Through the application of science and better understanding and use of natural resources, India would be ‘improved’ to the benefit of both colonialist and native.” Axelby, a historian, has written a paper titled “Calcutta Botanic Garden and the colonial re-ordering of the Indian environment”.

To return to Kyd, in time he introduced to the garden the nutmeg, the clove, the pepper vine. But it was a failed experiment. He tried to grow tropical fruits such as mangosteen and breadfruit as well as apples and pears from Europe, but this experiment too did not quite succeed. He then turned part of the garden into a teak plantation. Those days teak was used for timber to build ships and was in great demand. The teak plants seemed to thrive but when they were harvested, more than 30 years after Kyd’s death, it was noted that their trunks had hollowed out at the base and were useless. Basically, even in death, Kyd had not lost his touch.

Indeed, at the end of Kyd’s tenure, the garden was not quite the commercial green hotspot it was envisioned to be, but it had more than 300 varieties of plants.