These reflections on the life of John Dickie were written by RBGE Library Research Associate Jane Corrie, 20.1.2025

John Dickie (holding the banner in this photograph) died very peacefully on 28th December 2024. His death is a reminder of the debt the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) owes to the Friends of Hopetoun Crescent Garden. John and his wife Eileen (who survives him) were founder members of The Friends of Hopetoun Crescent Garden, establishing it in 2001. Without the efforts of this small community-based group, RBGE’s Botanic Cottage would not be standing as it is now, looking glorious in the low mid-winter sun. Astonishingly, come May 2026, it will have been open for business for ten years.

As many who work or volunteer at RBGE, and many visitors to the Garden are aware, ‘business’ at the Cottage has always been extremely ‘busy’ – though always set in a very peaceful environment. The building and the gardening space around it are used and enjoyed by a great variety of groups and individuals. Some of these come from within the Garden such as the Edible Gardening Project and the Herbology course, and some from without – such as the ‘Katsura’ group of vision impaired individuals (and guide dogs) who have been meeting regularly at the Cottage since it opened.

To briefly outline more than 10 years of activity: the role of John, Eileen and the Friends of Hopetoun Crescent Garden in the re-construction of Botanic Cottage was first of all to raise awareness of the importance of the threatened little building that still stood on Leith Walk in 2006. Secondly, they made connections from this building and its role in the 18th century Botanic Garden on Leith Walk to the current Hopetoun Crescent Garden – which intersects the site of John Hope’s garden but was not developed as a garden in its own right until the 1990s. Thirdly, they undertook the application for and the management of the critical £50,000 pot of money awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the City of Edinburgh Council (among others) in 2008. These funds enabled archival research and the archaeological examination of both the building’s fabric and of the remnants of the 18th century garden surrounding it.

The removal for safe storage to the Botanics’ Nursery of the stones and timbers of the house was a gift from Masterton Demolition. Following a second very successful fund-raising effort by RBGE itself, re-construction of the Cottage on its present site began in 2014 and the building opened for use in 2016.

I have spent the last few months listing the contents of the archive recording 25 years of the activities of the Friends of Hopetoun Crescent Garden (FHCG) – completing the task just a day or two before the news of John’s death. The nine boxes of this well-cared for and well-presented archive were accepted by the RBGE Archives in August 2024.

I thought I knew the story – having been involved myself in the ‘Cottage Project’ from 2006 to 2016 – and a ‘Friend of the Friends’ ever since. But, in fact I did not know the half of it. It has been a delight and a revelation to me to learn more. On the whole John preferred not to be a ‘committee person’ – leaving this kind of activity to Eileen. Their flat was the venue for many Cottage related meetings from 2006 to around 2011 – with John in the background amusing their small grandson – a regular visitor on the days the committee met. But John was very actively involved in setting up and managing the events arranged by the FHCG in the Hopetoun Crescent Garden itself and in the MacDonald Road Library. He was one of the founders of the Broughton History Society – which worked in tandem with the FHCG on many local issues. A beautiful mural in the McDonald Road Library that John helped produce celebrates the long history of the locality. John was also one of the founders and a leading light of its much loved ‘Spurtle’ newsletter – ‘Broughton’s Independent Stirrer’ to quote its by-line.

This sustained, local, community based activity by John and Eileen, known about at RBGE, has been set within a much broader commitment to issues of social justice. The photograph of John next to a ‘Stop the Poll Tax’ banner is a reminder of just one of them. There is nothing ‘nimbyish’ about their impassioned championing of the history and the reality of Hopetoun Crescent Garden itself – and its associated Cottage. There is no acronym for it – but John’s attitude was one of ‘Let’s Share My Back-yard – in fact – Let’s Have a Party!’

John Dickie, his wife Eileen and all the members and supporters of the Friends of Hopetoun Crescent Garden have created and supported a 21st century version of a New Town Garden – and they have also ensured the re-birth of Botanic Cottage at Inverleith. Their achievement is celebrated by the words engraved on the Eastern neo-Palladian style ‘portal’ to the building:

In honour of
ALL THE PEOPLE
Who have tended this place
With care passion and dedication
Their legacy lives all around us
The Botanic Cottage
Built Leith Walk 1765 Rebuilt Inverleith 2015

John would have approved of ALL THE PEOPLE.

Jane Corrie, RBGE Research Associate, 20 January 2025