Peter Wilkie reporting for RBGE Pride Group
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is fully committed to supporting human as well as plant diversity. Since 2017, the Garden has officially taken part in the annual Edinburgh Pride march and has also held activities at the Garden such as our Pride Tree where messages of support and celebrations of LGBTQ+ life were used to decorate a tree in the garden.
Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 regulations, Edinburgh Pride’s march has been cancelled again this year and it is very uncertain if events that involve gatherings of large numbers of people will be allowed to take place over the spring and summer.
However, we’d still love to celebrate PRIDE 2021 with you at the Botanics.
This year we are hosting Plant Pot Pride and are encouraging members of the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters to decorate a plant pot in celebration of Pride! Your plant pot should celebrate diversity, memorialise a personal pride moment or just be bright and colourful to show the joy and celebration of community which Pride marches embody. Extra points if you manage to grow something in it!
Once you’ve got your pot decorated, we’d love you to upload it to social media with the hashtag #PlantPotPride together with messages of celebration and support for Pride. These images and messages will be shared on our twitter account @BotanicsPride and it is hoped that the event will finish with an online social event to show off our pots/plants in the first week of August. You can also email us at (plantpotpride@rbge.org.uk) and we can upload your image to our social media for you, credited or anonymously if you prefer.
We really hope you get involved. Your pot does not need to be fancy – old plant pots, yoghurt pots, old milk bottles etc will do just as well as terracotta or plastic pots (reduce, reuse, recycle!) and if you add a plant it can be anything from cress or dandelions to the prize Monstera you got for your lockdown home office. The only limit is your imagination!
We look forward to seeing your creations.
LGBTQ+ resources that you might find useful
Based in Scotland, LGBT Health ‘Provides support, services and information to improve health and wellbeing, reduce social isolation and stimulate community development and volunteering.’ They have a helpline if you would like information or emotional support on a wide range of LGBT+ issues.
For those under 25, https://www.lgbtyouth.org.uk/ provides a service tailored to the needs of younger LGBT people and also operates a hotline as well as online chat based support.
Pride is about being aware of the struggles that the LGBT+ community face and how far we’ve come – but you don’t need to be part of the LGBT+ community to get involved – we welcome straight ‘allies’ who will stand beside us in our fight for equality and share in our celebrations of diversity and progress.