In the course of its 500-year history, Bangalore has been known by many sobriquets. Among its most popular names in the 80s and early 90s was its boast of being India’s Garden City. It earned the name because of its world-renowned, spectacular gardens like Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park. In addition, most old Bangalore neighbourhoods were always planned with a park. But most uniquely, the city’s trees were planted using the distinctive concept of serial blooming. First introduced by the German botanist Gustav Hermann Krumbiegal, who was hired by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar as the economic botanist of Lal Bagh, the approach planned the trees that lined Bangalore’s avenues so that a new group of trees bloomed at a different time of the year. Chosen from around the world, but mainly from South America, these trees flowered in a serial fashion. So, no matter at what time of the year you visited, Bangalore was always blooming. Today, even while most Bangaloreans believe that the city’s transformation into India’s IT capital has cost it much of its tree cover, Bangalore remains a conspicuously green city. Its trees still bloom in a series throughout the year, but at no time is this more evident than in spring, between the months of March and April. Here are five trees that keep Bangalore India’s garden city.