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Over the last few weeks, great progress has been made by the construction team rebuilding the Botanic Cottage. The foundations are now in place, and the outline of…
We have been redeveloping an area on the Oak lawn. A group of two cultivars of Ilex x altaclarensis have been removed, ‘Camelliifolia’ and ‘Hodgisii’; these are represented elsewhere…
Many people assume that work in the fruit and vegetable garden tails off as the sets winter in, however there still plenty of worthwhile jobs to do: Sow…
Names and Nomenclature When tracking down published scientific names, and their places of publication, IPNI, The Plant List and Tropicos are the three primary websites. The other listed…
With the protection of the alpine house this pan of Scilla lingulata var. ciliolata sunk into the sand bed is flowering exceptionally well. An added bonus is the…
Where else in Europe is there a six day festival celebrating a native tree? Arcidosso in Tuscany has an annual chestnut festival each October honouring the tree which…
Autumn is the time when gardeners are planning the next year’s planting. The Really Wild Veg project will hopefully run again in 2015 and some initial research has…
Bright sun sets off the pallet of colours that autumn brings. This image shows Betula lenta on the Azalea lawn. A seven year old sapling grown from seed…
Well alright not real hummingbirds. The closest thing we have in Britain is the equally spectacular humming-bird hawk-moth. This extraordinary day-flying moth put in an appearance in the…
Moth fly, Pericoma fuliginosa September 2014 was mostly dry and warm but there was a week-long period in the middle of the month when it was very damp,…
To round off the Really Wild Veg project for 2014 here is a selection of images taken throughout the year. It has been the inevitable mix of successes…
Just like last year I missed the construction of the mandala which makes it even more magical to stumble on. It was constructed on Monday and these photos…
Although I trained as a botanist, picking up a PhD in Rhododendron in the 1990s, my principle role is now working with information about plants and how we…
The Really Wild Veg project growing trials have been looking at how plants have been changed by domestication by growing crop wild relatives alongside domesticated equivalents. Comparing the…
Looking into the cabinets of the RBGE herbarium never fails to turn up a surprise. Today I was looking for specimens that might have come from the almost…
Weeding through the border carefully, and before a size 10 tackety boot crushed it, eagle eyed, we spotted a seedling of the Monkey Puzzle tree, Araucaria araucana. An…
Discovery of a plant previously unknown in an area is not what you might expect to happen within a botanic garden. Such places have large managed collections of…
Dianella ensifolia has bamboo like growth, sprouting from a rhizomatous root system. With a distribution through the Old World Tropics it has flourished in a tub positioned beneath…
In October the nights are drawing in and the weather is a lot cooler. You may still have some good produce to harvest but many of this year’s…