Growing Ever Stronger

This year the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is celebrating its 350th anniversary. What began in 1670 as a place where plants were cultivated so that physicians could develop new medicines has become one of the world’s leading centres of plant science and conservation.

Every week the ‘Botanics’ is responsible for ‘describing’ (the process by which previously-unknown plants are officially registered) entirely new plants. These new arrivals come from some of the remotest parts of the world, where teams from the Botanics lead plant-hunting expeditions onto high mountains and into deep jungles, and also from Scotland too, proving that there is still much about our native flora that remains to be discovered.

Within the Research Houses, DNA testing is revealing new facts about familiar plants while in the Herbarium, more than three million dried specimens, some collected by Charles Darwin on his voyage on The Beagle, is constantly expanding.

From acres of glasshouses to spacious nursery facilities and even a quarantine area where new plants are kept in isolation for six months before being introduced into the gardens, the Botanics is a vibrant hub of scientific research, education and high level horticulture, which is advancing our knowledge of the natural world and helping to safeguard endangered plants from around the world.

But to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who pass through its gates every year, the  Botanic’s, with its 70 acres tucked away behind tall railings, is first and foremost a beautiful garden, a peaceful oasis in the heart of the city where they can picnic on green lawns, stroll through glades of tall trees and scented shrubs and be enchanted by flowers.

And it’s now, when lengthening days and a warming sun wake plants from their winter slumbers that the Botanics is at its best. In the world-famous Rock Garden dwarf daffodils are spangled throughout a collection of plants native to high, dry places from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Within the Alpine Houses, species crocuses and tiny cyclamen are amongst the first jewel-like blooms to appear and on the Chinese Hillside, rhododendrons and camellias are bursting into bloom.

The RBGE holds the largest collection of Chinese plants outside of China and scientists here work closely with their counterparts in Asia, using plant material from Edinburgh to restore native populations that are threatened by climate change or development.

Within the magnificent Palm House and extensive glasshouses, plants from tropical and desert climates thrive in the warmth, while bog plants flourish in the damp areas around the ponds.

There are several ponds at the Botanics, including a contemporary one outside The John Hope Gateway, the reception area, gallery and gift shop that opened in 2009, and a much larger pond at the other end of the gardens that is home to a kingfisher, which feasts on dragonflies. And once the gates close to visitors in the evening the resident badgers come out to hunt for mice and voles - all within sight of Edinburgh Castle.

In the herbaceous border, which stretches for an astonishing 165m, perennials are opening fresh foliage. By early summer flowers of all kinds will be blooming here in a colourful show that will keep going until late autumn and behind the magnificent beech hedge that forms a backdrop to these floral fireworks lies the Queen Mother Memorial Garden with its shell grotto, bog myrtle labyrinth and profusion of roses.

Here too is the Botanics Cottage, first constructed in 1765 years and rebuilt in 2016 after its stones and timbers had spent 20 years in storage.

This cottage once stood on the RBGE’s previous site on Leith Walk where it served as a home for the head gardener and as a lecture theatre for botany students, but now, beautifully restored, it has become a centre for many of the Botanics’ community activities which include the Edible Gardening project, where groups from across the city grow vegetables in plots in the Demonstration Garden. Meanwhile, at the East Gate, a new garden designed for dementia sufferers is taking shape and outreach work sees experts from the Botanics helping groups of all kinds to make food and flowers flourish in their own neighbourhoods.

There are more than 3,500 trees spread out across the garden, including a grove of giant redwoods and many rare and endangered conifers. These are part of a ‘living Ark’, a collection of plants shared amongst many of the world’s botanical gardens in order to ensure their long-term survival. Some grow in Edinburgh, others flourish in the different climates offered by the garden’s outposts at Benmore in Argyll, Dawyck in the Borders and Logan in Galloway.

Collaboration is the key to preserving the world’s endangered plants and botanists and horticulturists from Edinburgh are currently working on projects in more than 35 countries, including Chile, Russia, the Czech Republic, Qatar and Italy.

They are helping too to conserve some of Scotland’s globally important ecosystems, including the temperate rain forests of the west coast, and in three years teams from the Botanics have doubled the populations of the rare Cicerbita alpina (alpine-blue sowthistle) in the Cairngorms.

But vital as this work is, what is equally important is that for generations of visitors the Botanics holds happy memories as the place where they and then their children first chased butterflies, picked daises and watched squirrels scamper through the trees.

Building for the Future
Work is under way on a project to refurbish the heritage Glasshouses, replace the ageing Research Houses and building a new visitor entrance the to Glasshouse experience. A state-of-the-art Plant Health Suite and education facilities, all run by an efficient and a sustainable energy centre, are also part of the plans.

Giant Attraction
One of the biggest attractions in recent years has been the giant corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanium), which flowered in 2017 and again in 2019. At three metres in height and named ‘New Reekie’ by staff, the smell of this pungent flower from West Sumatra has been likened to sweaty socks and rotten meat. Despite the stench, huge numbers of visitors filed through the glasshouses during the three days on each occasion when the smell was at its height.

Garden File
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Arboretum Place, Edinburgh EH3 5NZ
Open daily, free admission. (Glasshouse admission £7/£6 - free admission for children under 16).

www.rbge.org.uk