The station is located at the northwestern corner of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, where it was named after. It is the nearest MRT station to the Bukit Timah campus of the National University of Singapore. As Bukit Brown MRT station is currently non-operational, the section of tracks between Botanic Gardens station and Caldecott MRT station is the longest between any two stations on the Circle line. Botanic Gardens station is the only currently operational MRT station in Singapore to have an official Malay name.