The lockdown page that brought growers together
At 35, Chiranjit Maity cheerfully calls himself pagol (mad) about kagoz phool (paper flower), a Bengali name for Bougainvillaea. Ask him about the plant, and he can speak for hours, sharing stories about its bracts, colours, and cultivars with infectious passion.
During the Covid lockdown, Maity launched a Facebook page titled World of Bougainvillaea. Within a week, it had drawn over a lakh people from across the globe.
Questions, requests for rare cuttings, and enquiries about prized varieties began pouring in. Maity interacted with growers, nursery owners, breeders, collectors, and institutions. Through these conversations, the page brought him closer to Bougainvillaea enthusiasts around the world and helped him emerge as a trusted voice within the community.
Chiranjit Maity grows more than 400 Bougainvillaea varieties at his nursery in Singur
The rush of interest around the page reflected a wider change taking place across Bengal.
For generations, the Bengali bari (home) was defined by the fragrance of Bel, or jasmine, and the fiery canopy of Krishnachura. These plants served as ornamentals and cultural anchors, woven into the rhythms of festivals, seasons, and everyday life.
Today, a drive through South Kolkata, Barrackpore, or the peri-urban fringes of Howrah reveals another plant claiming space in Bengal’s urban landscape. Bougainvillaea spills across balconies, walls, and terraces in cascades of magenta, purple, orange, and white.
Bougainvillaea can grow in balcony containers with sunlight and well-drained soil.
Social media has carried this enthusiasm further. Facebook and Instagram are filled with posts in Bangla, where gardeners exchange photographs, growing advice, and information about cultivars.
Why Bengal’s gardeners are choosing bougainvillaea
The change reflects a post-pandemic gardening boom as well as the plant’s ability to adapt to urban growing conditions. Nursery owners report that Bougainvillaea sales have overtaken those of traditional creepers by nearly 40% over the past three years.
Its appeal lies partly in the limited care it demands. Unlike Madhabilata, Bougainvillaea can flourish through warm temperatures, strong sunlight, distinct dry spells, monsoon rainfall, mild winters, and well-drained soil.
White Bougainvillaea is among more than 250 cultivated varieties grown across Bengal.
These conditions suit much of Bengal. The plant can also grow in polluted urban air and the cramped corners of city balconies.
More than 250 cultivated varieties are grown in the region, most of them hybrids of B. spectabilis, B. glabra, and B. peruviana. They are valued for their vivid bracts in pink, red, purple, orange, white, and variegated forms.
The vibrant pink bush long seen across Indian gardens and cityscapes is Camarillo Fiesta, a landscaper’s favourite and one of Bougainvillaea’s most familiar varieties.
From a colonial import to Bagan Vilas
Bougainvillaea’s journey to Bengal began in the 19th century. The Agri-Horticultural Society of India, founded in 1820, imported cultivars such as B. spectabilis and B. glabra from Europe and South America.
Over time, the plant moved beyond institutional gardens and spread across British India through the efforts of individual growers. Hybrids such as the bicoloured ‘Mary Palmer’ also became popular.
Bougainvillaea lines roads and garden boundaries across the Santiniketan landscape.
At Santiniketan, Bougainvillaea acquired a distinctly Bengali identity.
The afternoon sun slanted across the red earth as cascades of Bougainvillaea moved in the breeze. Rabindranath Tagore, walking with his students, paused near the flowering arches.
“Bagan Vilas,” he called them, meaning ornament of the garden.
Tagore’s influence on Bengal’s cultural landscape helped the name travel through the students of Visva-Bharati and into wider use. Gardeners and collectors continue to use Bagan Vilas for the plant today.
Through that name, Bougainvillaea became part of Bengal’s cultural vocabulary and came to represent accessible beauty and resilience.
Inside a nursery with one lakh saplings
Nestled in Ratanpur in Singur, Maity’s Bougainvillaea Garden is among the few nurseries in India dedicated entirely to the plant.
Spread across four bighas, it nurtures more than 400 varieties. Although Maity maintains a modest online presence, most of his business takes place offline.
At any given time, the nursery shelters close to one lakh saplings.
Maity’s four-bigha nursery holds close to one lakh Bougainvillaea saplings at a time.
Their bracts, the vivid, papery, leaf-like structures often mistaken for flowers, unfurl in shades ranging from familiar magentas and purples to rare yellows and golds.
Across India, pink, red, orange, white, and variegated blends remain the most common. Collectors around the world also seek coral, cream, and multicoloured hybrids, turning the hardy ornamental into a horticultural treasure.
Prices begin at around Rs 50 for common saplings and can rise to Rs 1,000 depending on the plant’s age and variety. Rare collector plants can fetch upwards of Rs 8,000, depending on their age, rarity, and how unusual the cultivar is.
Golden Buttercup has yellow foliage and purple bracts, unlike common green-leaved forms.
Maity recently donated 100 cultivars to the Howrah-based Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Indian Botanical Garden, known for its historic plant collections and the Great Banyan Tree. The cultivars are now part of the Botanical Garden’s collection, where they can be preserved for future generations.
Some Bougainvillaea cultivars also carry a subtle fragrance. Their true flowers, which are small and partly hidden within the bracts, can release a honey-citrus scent with hints of jasmine.
“One day I hope to acquire the scented cultivars: Raspberry Ice, Double Pink, Glabra Sanderiana,” Maity says, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.
For him, Bougainvillaea has become a lifelong pursuit and a calling shaped by colour, curiosity, and constant discovery.
The rooftop garden that replaced orchids
In Rahara, retired zoologist Dr Partha Pratim Biswas tends a 2,500 sq ft chaad bagan (terrace garden).
Watermelon Kiss is one of the named cultivars collected by Bougainvillaea growers.
His rooftop was once known for orchids. Today, it holds nearly 30 Bougainvillaea cultivars, collected over 20 years.
“Over the years, I gave up on orchids. They demanded too much care. Bougainvillaea, on the other hand, thrive even when neglected,” he says.
His rooftop reflects the practical choices many urban gardeners now make. Alongside Bougainvillaea, Gerbera, Anthurium, succulents, and ferns cover parts of the terrace and help keep it cooler during scorching summers.
For Biswas, Bougainvillaea serves as an ornamental and a climate companion. It adapts to stressful conditions and continues to offer colour.
Why drought can bring more blooms
Botanists find Bougainvillaea fascinating because of this ability to survive stress.
Structurally, it is a thorned, scrambling vine. It is also xerophytic, which means it is adapted to environments where very little water is available, including desert-like conditions.
Dr Anjan Kumar Sinha, Assistant Professor of Botany at Raghunathpur College in Purulia, is best known for his work on agrobiodiversity conservation, particularly the traditional rice landraces of Bankura and Purulia.
A recipient of the Plant Genome Saviour Recognition Award for conserving paddy landraces, he is also an avid Bougainvillaea collector.
Botanist Dr Anjan Kumar Sinha maintains a personal collection of Bougainvillaea plants.
“Bougainvillaea’s real trick,” he explains, “is that its vivid ‘flowers’ are actually papery bracts, modified leaves that encircle the tiny, almost hidden true blooms. The plant produces its most profuse displays under stress, especially drought. When all requirements are met and drought stress is withdrawn, it simply settles into a stable vegetative state.”
Its ability to grow in hot, dry, and poor soils helps explain its popularity among gardeners who have limited time, space, or water for demanding ornamentals.
When workshops opened up a business opportunity
In February 2021, CSIR-NBRI hosted its first workshop on Bougainvillaea care and propagation at the Indian Botanical Garden. Two years later, the institute organised another workshop at Maity’s Bougainvillaea Garden.
Both workshops drew hundreds of nursery owners from across West Bengal.
“After these workshops, many began to see Bougainvillaea as a serious business opportunity, collecting named cultivars from across India. Today, Bengal’s nursery owners maintain an impressive and diverse collection of documented varieties,” observes Dr Biresh Kumar Banerji, former Director and Head of the Floriculture Division at CSIR-NBRI, Lucknow.
Dr Biresh Kumar Banerji has bred eleven internationally registered Bougainvillaea cultivars.
Banerji has been honoured by the Bougainvillaea Society of India and elected as a Fellow of the Indian Society of Ornamental Horticulture.
He has bred eleven cultivars, including the celebrated ‘Abhimanyu’, all of which are registered internationally.
The workshops helped nursery owners look beyond the plant’s familiar roadside and garden forms. Named cultivars, propagation techniques, and specialised collections created opportunities for nurseries to treat Bougainvillaea as a distinct horticultural enterprise.
Scientific institutions, breeders, collectors, and nursery owners now form part of an expanding network around the plant.
A terrace garden chosen by her son
Bougainvillaea also carries deeply personal meaning inside the homes where it grows.
At Purbasha Housing Estate in Salt Lake, academic and autism advocate Dr Mitu De tends a terrace garden where her autistic son chose three Bougainvillaea colours.
“I took up gardening as my son insisted. Over the years, it has become a healing landscape,” she says.
Bougainvillaea is commonly grown beside homes, paths and boundary walls across Bengal.
Her rooftop holds hibiscus, roses, morning glory, periwinkles, adenium, bleeding heart vine, vegetables, and Bougainvillaea.
The garden grew from her son’s interest and became a space they could shape together. For Dr De, its colours and ability to adapt reflect the values of care and inclusion that guide her advocacy work.
Why the plant found new life after the pandemic
Bougainvillaea’s cultivation methods did not change after the pandemic. Its popularity did.
Social media allowed growers, collectors, and home gardeners to discover named varieties, exchange advice, and connect with sellers. Its limited maintenance needs made it particularly appealing to people who had begun gardening at home.
Dense Bougainvillaea shrubs are used as flowering boundaries around Santiniketan.
Bougainvillaea flourishes in cramped balconies and adapts to polluted air. Its bracts in magenta, red, orange, purple, white, and variegated shades match Bengal’s long-standing affection for vivid ornamentals.
Collectors propagate the plant through stem cuttings, grafting, and air layering. Common saplings remain widely accessible, while rare hybrids attract specialist collectors willing to spend far more.
This range allows a first-time gardener to begin with a Rs 50 plant while a dedicated collector may seek a rare cultivar priced at several thousand rupees.
Naming blooms after Bengal’s icons
In Barrackpore, Amitava Mukherjee has spent decades shaping another part of Bengal’s Bougainvillaea story.
An independent plant breeder, he has developed more than a hundred cultivars since the mid-1980s. His varieties are prolific bloomers, resistant to disease, and suited to Indian growing conditions.
Mukherjee does not disclose the details of his breeding methods. The work, he says, depends on years of observation and experience.
Balaka is among Amitava Mukherjee’s cultivars that have gained popularity among Bengalis.
The names he gives his cultivars make his collection especially distinctive. Each one carries an act of cultural remembrance.
His blooms honour Bengal’s luminaries: J.C. Bose, the polymath botanist; Nazrul, the rebel poet; Suchitra Sen, the iconic actress; Manna Dey, the master singer; and Ramkrishna, the mystic saint.
One cultivar is named Ahimsa, after Gandhi’s principle of non-violence. His recent cultivar, Maumita, memorialises a medical student from R.G. Kar Medical College who was a victim of sexual violence.
Mukherjee’s Suchitra Sen cultivar has reached Bougainvillaea collectors in China
Mukherjee has also looked beyond India. He recently developed a cultivar named S.Z. Hualao in honour of a distinguished Chinese Bougainvillaea expert.
From Kolkata nurseries, his plants travel to collectors in Taiwan, China, Vietnam, and other countries. Many are dwarf forms with smaller leaves and abundant blossoms.
“My creations, Balaka, Suchitra Sen, Ravi Shankar, Nandlal Bose, have become very popular abroad,” says Mukherjee.
Batasi is a Bougainvillaea bud sport named after Chittaranjan Maity’s sister.
He is also an author and translator and retired as Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes.
A flower Bengal made its own
Bougainvillaea’s journey reflects Bengal’s ability to absorb global influences and give them a local language.
Tagore gave the colonial import the name Bagan Vilas. Decades later, collectors such as Maity built communities around it, Biswas replaced demanding orchids with it, Dr De allowed her son’s choices to shape their terrace garden, and Mukherjee named new cultivars after people Bengal remembers.
Across balconies, rooftop gardens, nurseries, and botanical collections, the plant continues to adapt.
For Maity, the journey still holds new possibilities. He continues to nurture close to one lakh saplings while hoping to add Raspberry Ice, Double Pink, and Glabra Sanderiana to his collection.
That search keeps Bengal’s Bagan Vilas growing, one cutting, cultivar, and rooftop at a time.
