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Villa Lante

Villa Lante is one of the finest examples of a renaissance garden in Italy. The garden exhibits the aspects we expect from these flamboyant displays of grandeur: geometric,…

Parco Dei Mostri

Italy is famous for its renaissance gardens. Students are taught in their second and third year of the Edinburgh Botanics plantsmanship course about the beautiful uniformity and strict…

In the bowels of the plant

Astelia chathamica is a vigorous bold clump of sword shaped leaves. A native to New Zealand, more specifically, the Chatham Islands. Our well established plant is fruiting prolifically….

Meet Hatch

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

The Garden of Tranquillity

Judy Good, a recent Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s Garden Design Diploma graduate has designed a garden for people living with dementia. The Garden of Tranquillity will be a…

The Last Word on The Lost Words

As the doors close on what has been our most popular exhibition in Inverleith House it is worth reflecting on what has made The Lost Words such a…

Progress with the Edinburgh potato

Jan and Liz, Edible Gardening Project volunteers, have been continuing the quest to recreate the Edinburgh potato (Solanum xedinense). A challenge that they face is that potato flowers…

July 2018 Garden Wildlife Report

July 2018 was yet another very sunny and warm month at RBGE. The mean maximum temperature was 21.7°C – 2.6°C above the long term average – and the…

Mellow yellow

What better way to light up the area beneath a deciduous canopy, in this case, Salix x sepulcralis ‘Chrysocoma’ . Sunlight filtering through the canopy and playing tricks…

Bosco Verticale

The Bosco Verticale (or ‘vertical forest’) is one of the most innovative designs I have seen. It is an example of modern cutting edge construction with an awareness…

Parassiti e malattie

Pests and Disease in Italy The scrutiny of the plant world has recently fallen upon Italy due to a vicious disease which has destroyed many ancient olive groves….

Summer Roses

The much loved rose is by nature a flower of soft colours ranging from pale creams and lemons to peaches, pinks and deeper reds and crimson. For centuries…

Folded foliage and weighty limbs

Following the prolonged dry period, the rain that we are experiencing now is a welcome shock to plants. The Paeonia lutea reacted to the additional weight of this…

Visit by Master Hai Tao to RBGE

RBGE welcomed Buddhist Master Hai Tao and his entourage on a warm, drizzly day in Edinburgh last week. His visit was primarily to see and officially bless the…

Two Clematis

In an open aspect to the south of the rock garden two Clematis are flowering. Clematis ternifolia, a vigorous grower with lightly scented white star like flowers bearing…

How much liverwort do you need to get 50 μg of DNA?

There’s an exciting project, The 10KP (10,000 Plants) Genome Sequencing Project, that aims to sequence and characterize representative genomes from every major clade of embryophytes, green algae, and…

Botanical campanology

Campanula incurva found growing in the rock garden and producing a mass of large inflated upturned bell shaped white flowers, the texture resembling parchment paper, all from a…

The colourful Herbaceous Border

The Herbaceous Border at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is 165m long and is backed by one of Britain’s finest beech hedges. The border is currently a riot…

Recreating Edinburgh’s potato

Scotland has a global reputation for potato research, and as a producer of quality, disease free, seed potatoes used by farmers. Many people would think that the tattie…

The hot end of the border

The herbaceous border has a group of plants throwing out hot colours. Revelling in the long hot, dry days, this is peak Monarda season. Complementing the Monarda ‘Jacob…