Category: NearbyPage 10 of 11
Points of interest for our Botanics Nearby app
The lawn in front of Inverleith House provides an opportunity for visitors to relax and take in a spectacular panorama of the city, stretching from Calton Hill (left), along the length of Princes Street to Edinburgh Castle rising up on the mound (Right).
Staff at RBGE have had a long established relationship with China, and this area of the garden highlights this, and displays the outstanding collection of Chinese plants held at Inverleith.
The radical design of the main range of glasshouses, opened in 1967, has been hailed as one of the most innovative in the 20th Century.
Let the glasshouses take you on a journey of discovery through the world of plants. In our ten landscaped environments you will find plants that have adapted to a variety of different growing conditions, from rainforests to deserts.
Along the walkway and in the glasshouse below it, are plants from Mediterranean climates all over the world. In this area you will find plants from the Southern Europe, Western Australia, California, South Africa and some parts of South America.
The plants on display in this house are from the same geographical region as the Montane Tropics House (South-East Asia). This wet-warm habitat has driven the huge diversity of plants which can be found in this region.
Holding collections from the mountain regions of South-East Asia (Borneo to Indonesia and the island of New Guinea) this house showcases one of the long term research groups – the Vireya Rhododendrons.
This house displays some of the adaptations plants have made to the prolonged droughts and extreme temperatures of the desert regions across the world.
As you walk in to this house you are greeted by the heat and humidity of a South American rainforest, one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet.
Whilst the tropical plants in this house may be unfamiliar, the products produced from them are part of your daily life.
Get transported back through time to when dinosaurs ruled the earth. The ferns, horsetails, mosses, liverworts and conifers on display in this house are among the most ancient groups of plants having been around for over 350 million years.
Here you will find plants from the opposite ends of the evolutionary scale. At the one end we have the primitive cycads, whilst at the other are orchids, some of the most sophisticated groups of plants.
This is the oldest of the glasshouses, built in 1834, at the time it was largest of its kind in Britain.
The temperate palm house was built in 1858 by Robert Matheson with a grant of £6,000 from Parliament. At 21.95m (72ft) tall this is the tallest glasshouse in the UK, and is one of the tallest classic palm houses in the world.
The Queen Mother’s Memorial Garden, designed by architect Lachlan Stewart, was opened in July 2006 by members of the Royal Family including Her Majesty The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and The Duke and Duchess of Rothesay.
The aspen is native throughout the cool and temperate regions of Europe and Asia, and has the most northerly distribution of those trees native to Scotland, occurring in Shetland out of the way of grazing animals.
The lime is native across much of Europe and into western Asia. In Britain it is thought to be native up into northern England, with populations further north introduced.
The Scots Pine is one of the most wide spread pine species, with a range extending from north China to western Scotland.
The rowan is also known as the mountain ash, as its leaves resemble those of ash (Fraxinus excelsior). It is found throughout most of Europe, parts of Asia and northern Africa.
Juniper is a shrubby conifer, with a wide range throughout the cooler regions of the northern hemisphere.