Category: Library and ArchivesPage 1 of 5
Information about the collections held in the RBGE Library and Archives
There is a box in the RBGE Archives marked ‘Granny’ which usually begs the question of what’s inside? The following blog, researched and written by RBGE Garden Guide…
by Dr Amanda Thomson I was sitting in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Library, looking through F.R. Irvine’s archive boxes. Irvine was a botanist who was born in…
I recently acquired two botanical watercolours by Janet Dick (1774–1857) painted in Madras in 1802 and 1803. Competent enough in execution, the main reason for buying them was…
What is the ‘mushroomy’ scent of heritage? And what do the institutions that care for it — such as the RBGE — smell like? By Siôn Parkinson Dr…
The following blog was written by Connie Ma, a placement student in the Herbarium. As part of my MSc History of Art, Theory and Display programme at the…
In Spring 2004 a memorable exhibition curated by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher was shown at the Drawing Center in New York, and later that year at…
In May 1810 the McNab family took up residence in Botanics Cottage, then on its original site on Leith Walk. The family consisted of William, his wife Elizabeth,…
This Black History Month, we explore our links with Dr William Fergusson (1796 – 1846) and Surgeon-Major James ‘Africanus’ Beale Horton (1835 – 1883).
George Herbert Cave of Windsor, southeast England (1872-1965), was a botanist and plant collector who rapidly rose to prominence in the Victorian era. He collected plants in Sikkim…
A post by RBGE Research Associate Dr. Helen Bennett In April 2023 we were visited at RBGE by Elizabeth Farquharson with her daughter Katharine Trotter, to gift her…
During my work on Hugh Cleghorn I became very interested in the Madras School of Art, the first of its type in India, established on 1 May 1850…
Stella Ross-Craig (1906–2006) is best known for her unsurpassed, uncoloured, pen and ink Drawings of British Plants (1948–1973). However, she was also an accomplished painter in watercolour. From…
Intrigued by the recent Botanics Story concerning letters from the anatomist John Goodsir to his Edinburgh University professorial botanical colleague John Hutton Balfour, and involving their mutual friend…
A tangled Calcutta-Caledonian web: James Kerr, John Fleming and John Hope’s engravings of asafoetida
One of the few benefits of getting older is that, assuming one still has one’s marbles and keeps one’s eyes open, new evidence can crop up and fall…
by Michael T. Tracy Housed in the archives of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is the collection of John Hutton Balfour papers which include numerous correspondences of…
At the Natural History Museum I’ve recently catalogued a collection of 314 botanical watercolours made at the Saharunpur Botanic Garden in northern India between 1843 and 1866 for…
In the spirit of Black History Month, we are sharing the story, otherwise untold, of Dr Archibald Hewan, a 19th century Black doctor and naturalist. Born in Jamaica…
18 August 1928 – 7 August 2022 Ian Charleson Hedge, who passed away peacefully last month at the age of 93, was an exceptional botanist and long-time lynchpin…
On the 4th of July 2021, water ingress from a burst drainpipe above the reception of our Science building on Inverleith Row made its way into the RBGE…
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…