Rimba Ilmu Botanic Garden, Universiti Malaya

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Malaysia

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Rimba Ilmu (literally "Forest of Knowledge") Botanic Garden is Malaysia's first and only university botanic garden, established in August 1974 by late Professor W.R. Stanton and UM botanists on an abandoned rubber plantation within the Universiti Malaya campus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The garden occupies approximately 57.3 to 80 hectares (sources vary) in the Klang Valley, Malaysia's most populated metropolis, and has evolved from secondary forest plants into a tropical botanical garden housing over 1,200 to 1,700 planted species of living collections, with many more spontaneously established. The collection is mainly comprised of indigenous Malaysian plant species but includes many from tropical Asia, the Pacific islands, Australia, South America, Africa, and Madagascar, representing one of the most important biological conservatories in Malaysia.

Unusually for a botanic garden, Rimba Ilmu eschews a formal flower garden aesthetic in favor of a tropical forest look, where natural processes shape the garden and its inhabitants alongside human-directed curation, making it an 80-hectare tropical rainforest garden.