Harry’s Gates
Every day, hundreds of visitors pour into the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, many of them through our East Gate. To do this, one must pass through two sets...
Backing nature for climate at COP26
This month the world looks to Glasgow for signs of progress with tackling the climate emergency. Although the negotiations must focus on the transition to a low-carbon economy...
Eat your sea greens
Seaweed has been a traditional foraged food in coastal Scottish communities for as long as people have inhabited the coast. Despite being nutritious and abundant it became associated...
International Day of Forests 2021 – Resilience Bench
On this year’s International Day of Forests, we are taking a look at our newest permanent work by Angus Ross, Resilience Bench, which took up residence in Inverleith House when we reopened between national lockdowns in October 2020.
Florilegium: A gathering of flowers
In RBGE Creative Programmes’ exhibition in Inverleith House – Florilegium: A gathering of flowers, there is something for everyone. In the first room downstairs, you can lose yourself in the meticulously skilled detail of botanical paintings and illustrations, which have been contributed from around the world. Upstairs, you can meander from Wendy McMurdo’s Scottish Garden, through a Barbadian sugarcane plantation with Annalee Davis, pausing upon RBGE’s own Herbarium and Centre for Middle-Eastern plants with Lyndsay Mann, and finally travelling through a floral take on 100 days of traditional Taiwanese mourning with Lee Mingwei.
Connecting with plants
Greg Kenicer and Marjorie Lotfi Gill in conversation for Book Week Scotland To mark Book Week Scotland 2020, botanist and author Greg Kenicer from the Garden’s Education team...
Closing the Loop
In March 2020, RBGE was due to host ‘Closing the Loop’ in partnership with Applied Arts Scotland – a workshop for makers exploring environmentally sustainable approaches to materials and making, to complement the Think Plastic exhibition in the John Hope Gateway. However, the temporary closure of the Garden, due to COVID-19, shifted this workshop into the virtual realm. The title of this discursive workshop ‘Closing the Loop’ drew on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s concept of circular economies, as described by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Early Warning Signs
In a time of such unpredictable global conditions, we can’t pull ourselves away from thinking about the timely delivery of RBGE’s newly adopted artwork Early Warning Signs. Taking up a prominent position at the entrance to Inverleith House at the beginning of this year, it seems only too fitting that the spinning ‘climate/change’ (‘change/climate’) sign arrived during a particularly stormy January.
Part 2/2: ‘Sensing and Presencing the Imperceptible’, Siân Bowen’s Micro-conference
Alessandra Leruste has been a Volunteer gallery assistant with Inverleith House since 2019. Alessandra has an MA in History of art from the University of Edinburgh and has her own art-writing blog. Here, Alessandra shares her experience from the afternoon of Siân Bowen's micro-conference at RBGE.