Gothenburg’s botanical garden, inaugurated in 1923, belonged until 2001 to the city of Gothenburg. Since 2001 it is part of Region Västra Götaland. The main house in the garden, Stora Änggården, was built in 1812 and renovated under the supervision of the architect Sigfrid Ericson in 1919 and is now used as staff residence.

Donations from many sources have played a vital role in the financing of the garden. Land was donated by the city and by private persons. An adjacent plot of land was donated by the city to Gothenburg University for the building of the Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences – seen to the right from the garden’s main entrance. They were designed by the architects Stig Hansson and Walter Kiessling and completed in 1971. In 1975 the woodlands containing the arboretum with a collection of exotic trees were declared as a nature reserve and were named Änggårdsbergen.

One of the prominent botanists who created the garden was Carl Skottsberg, who made several research trips around the globe to collect the rare plants for the garden. Skottsberg participated in the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 to 1903 on the ship Antarctic, and was leader of the Swedish Magellanic Expedition to Patagonia, 1907 to 1909. Carl Skottsberg is believed to have been the last to have seen theSantalum fernandezianum tree alive when he visited the Juan Fernández Islands in 1908. He was conservator at the Uppsala University Botanical Museum 1909 to 1914, but led the work on the new Botanical Garden in Gothenburg from 1915, and was appointed professor and director of the garden in 1919. Skottsberg was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and several other Swedish learned societies, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1950. That same year, he was president of the 7th International Botanical Congress. He was awarded the Linnean Society of London’s Darwin-Wallace-Medal in 1958 and the Linnean Medal in 1959.