Category: ExhibitionsPage 1 of 5

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.

Part 1/2: ‘Sensing and Presencing the Imperceptible’, Siân Bowen’s Micro-conference

Klaudia Jaworska is in her third year at Edinburgh Napier University, studying International Festivals and Events Management and Marketing. As part of her course, she is currently carrying out a work placement in RBGE’s Public Engagement Department. Here, Klaudia shares her experience from the morning of Siân Bowen’s micro-conference at RBGE.

Looking at After Hortus Malabaricus

As a Gallery Volunteer it has been my privilege to spend a good number of hours looking at the diverse range of objects in the artist Siân Bowen’s…

Siân Bowen’s Leverhulme Research Fellowship Exhibition: After Hortus Malabaricus: Sensing and Presencing Rare Plants

After Hortus Malabaricus: Sensing and Presencing Rare Plants marks the culmination of my four-year collaboration with the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Having held my first solo exhibition in Scotland at Inverleith House at RBGE in 1995, it is wonderful to be able to exhibit here once again. In 2017, I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to carry out the project. The Leverhulme Trust is known for supporting experimental proposals with an emphasis on outward facing journeys. The journey that the award facilitated has certainly been extraordinary – opening up possibilities to work with botanists, ecologists, historical researchers, cultural geographers, taxonomists and curators. It has allowed encounters with rare plants in darkened herbaria and light-filled South Indian forests and swamps; epistemologies used to ‘reveal’ specimens and sensory differences between plants’ live and preserved states.

Tjipetir – the next chapter…

The Think Plastic- materials and making exhibition which has just opened is a collaboration between artists Lorna Fraser, Carol Sinclair, Fiona Hutchison, Fiona Pilgrim and Carla Edwards and…

Why I love Volunteering for Microsculpture & Talking About Insect Vision

As a life-long lover of insects, I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer at the Microsulpture exhibition at the Inverleith House Gallery at the Botanics .  I had…

Microsculpture on your door step

Guest blog by Ashleigh Whiffin, entomologist (NMS) The breath-taking Microsculpture exhibition of insect portraits opens at RBGE later this month and it’s no secret that I’m a little…

Natural Selection Exhibition at Inverleith House

Inverleith house has produced many wonderful exhibitions. The Lost Words exhibition being a great success with the many visitors that attended. The newest addition to Inverleith house is…

Meet Hatch

Introducing Hatch, the newest member of the RBGE menagerie, and the only oomycete.

Chelsea Flower Show 2018

  This year was my first year at Chelsea. I was lucky enough to be able to work at Chelsea for Kevock garden plants. The display had a…

The Sweet Chestnut project (The Afterlife of a Tree)

Building on the biodiversity the garden supports  Regular visitors to the garden will have noticed a mature Sweet Chestnut in the later stages of its life with only a…