This article looks at the conception and experience of provincial urbanism in colonial Bengal during the nineteenth century. The specific sites of enquiry are ‘civil stations’, colonial administrative towns that were initially established as agricultural revenue collection centres but that later grew to be key nodal points in late nineteenth-century imperial governance in India. Tracing the development of the towns in terms of their site selection and the carefully-mediated relationship between natural and built environments, the article reveals how the pursuit of a ‘picturesque’, idyllic and green urbanism was continuously subverted by apparently chaotic forces and spaces on which, ironically, the very functioning of the towns was dependent.