In 1763, Governor Hans Henrik Böje rented a plot of land from the city of Helsinki bordered by Hämeen maantie (nowadays Siltasaarenkatu) and started a garden on it.

Later on, in 1827, work on transforming the garden into a walking area for the denizens of Helsinki commenced according to plans drawn up by Carl Ludvig Engel.

After Tillandz’ death, the garden was left to its own demise until Professor Pehr Kalm took responsibility for it.

The garden started to flourish as Kalm brought hundreds of useful plants with him from North America.

Professor of Zoology and Botany Carl Reinhold Sahlberg started construction on a new garden, relying on his extensive private collection that was not destroyed in the Great Fire of Turku.

In 1903, construction on the institute building housing the Botanical Department and the Botanical Museum that Nyström had designed to replace the original main building now serving as the gardeners’ living quarters and the professor's living quarters was finished.

As a result, all of the more than 1,500 taxa in the greenhouses, with the exception of a single cypress and the seeds of a water-lily, died due to freezing temperatures.

In the 20th century, the university's botanical garden started to run out of space, so when the decision was made to split the university into four separate campus areas in the 1970s, a plot of land for a new botanical garden was set aside on the Kumpula Campus.

The plants are gathered from areas that have climates similar to that of southern Finland, e.g., from Europe, North America and the Far East.