Botanical Gardens is situated on the other side of Elephantine Island on the western bank to the River Nile in Aswan. Botanical Gardens can be reached only by felucca, and you may wish to include it in a tour west bank sites. On the way to the island, Aswan disappears behind Elephantine Island and you could be almost anywhere along the Nile, except that few stretches of the river are as lovely as this.

Still widely known as Kitchener's Island, it was presented to Kitchener early in past century when he was Consul-General in Egypt and here he indulged this passion for flowers, ordering plants from India and all over the Middle and Far East, it was then known as the lords house. Soon after the lord left the island it was given back to the ministry of irrigation and was then known as the Kings Island. Ever since 1928 and the ministry of irrigation has transferred the island into natural part full of trees from the 5 continents.

The island is rich of its plants, which were imported from all over the world. The island has four doors, the first is in the north, the second is in the south, the third is in the middle and the forth is consecrated for the workers of the island.

Though it is not what it was, a visit is still enjoyable, and you should allow a guide to attach himself to you: he will skip about like one of Peter Pan's boys among the trees and plants in his sandals and Galabeya, picking leaves, flowers and fruits and crushing these in his fingers for you to smell, awakening all the pungency color, and at the south end there is the old sight of hundreds of white ducks padding about in a closed-of cove, a research station for duck breeding.