The garden is located in the municipality of Stari Grad and is administered by the University of Belgrade's School of Biology.

[3][4] The botanical garden was founded in 1874 by the decree of the Ministry of Education of the Kingdom of Serbia, at the suggestion of the botanist Josif Pančić, who also became its first manager.

Original lot assigned to Pančić was on the bank of the Danube, in the neighborhood of Dorćol, at the end of the Dunavska Street.

Pančić was pleased that the lot was in the vicinity of the downtown and the Kalemegdan Park, so that Belgraders can visit the garden with ease.

[6] In Pančić’s honor, in 1889, king Milan Obrenović donated the estate (former orchard and vineyard, inherited from his grandfather Jevrem Obrenović) to the Great School in Belgrade for the purpose of the construction of new botanical garden, provided that it be named "Jevremovac" (Serbian for "Jevrem's garden"), after his grandfather.

[7] At the time, the estate was on the outskirts of Belgrade, but soon city spread further from it, leaving the garden as an urban oasis.

Apart from its founder, Josif Pančić, very important for the development and growth of Jevremovac was its longtime manager (1906–1934), Nedeljko Košanin under whose supervision the botanical garden experienced its golden age.

It now hosts 60,000 visitors a year, and is the second most visited natural monument in Serbia, after the mountain and national park Kopaonik.

Among numerous other, later planted species, there are giant sequoia, ginkgo biloba, Mexican palm, ephedra, etc.

[2] Besides the open space, the arboretum also includes a greenhouse and the Institute of Botany's premises (administrative building, herbarium, library, lecture hall and laboratories).

In front of the administrative building, a bust of the former manager Nedeljko Košanin was erected in 2006, celebrating 100 years of his appointment.

The Japanese garden is created by Vera and Mihailo Grbić, landscape architects, and covers an area of 20 ares (22,000 square feet).

A specially designed "bee hotel" was also installed, where the process of eggs laying, honeycomb forming and honey making will be transparent to the visitors.

Apart from 200 scientific and professional magazines it also accommodates over 6,000 books, including Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, printed in 1562.

[1] During one of the reconstructions of the administrative building, two underground rooms with oval-shaped ceilings were accidentally discovered when a wall collapsed.

They are assumed to be part of Belgrade’s lagums, vast web of underground corridors which spread beneath the surface of the city.

As the temperature, even at the highest, never goes over 20 Celsius, it was used as a huge refrigerator where food and wine were cooled and preserved for the royal court, which is why they are called "King’s ice-cellars".

During the creation of the Japanese garden, a flow of underground water was discovered near lagum at the depth of 92 meters.

There are also plans for several small, science-promoting laboratories within the building, zoological and botanical collections, seed bank of Serbian autochthonous plant species and auditorium for 190 people.

Films which have used the garden as a setting include We Are Not Angels (1992), Obituary for Escobar (2008) and Montevideo, God Bless You!

It is bounded by the streets of Bulevar despota Stefana on the north (dividing it from the neighborhoods of Stari Grad and, further, Viline Vode), Cvijićeva on the west (Profesorska Kolonija), Takovska on the southeast and south (Stara Palilula, Tašmajdan), Svetogorska on the southwest (Dva Bela Goluba) and Palmotićeva (Kopitareva Gradina).

Other public buildings include elementary school "Vuk Karadžić" and Belgrade Institute for Urbanism.

At the northwest corner, there is a small square, where streets of Bulevar Despota Stefana, Drinčićeva, Gundilićev Venac and Carigradska meet.

On 24 March 2021 rearrangement of the square's semi-circular pedestrian island began in order to erect the monument to the despot Stefan Lazarević.

The leveling with the neighboring streets is done with the small, cascade walls, while the area around the monument is made of white marble square slabs and stone curbs.

This became a major city news as the streets were closed, police blocked the area, neighborhood was cut from the water supplies and residents of the surrounding buildings were resettled.