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Tajikistan 2014: Onward to Khorog

We have now arrived in Tajikistan and, after spending a day in Dushanbe sorting out equipment and looking round Dushanbe Botanic garden, we hired a 4x4to drive us…

World War 1 Poppy Field

The summer of 1914 was the beginning of World War 1. In summertime this year, it will mark 100 years since it began. In memory of those who…

Really Wild Veg – 2014 growing trials

Building on the success of the Really Wild Veg trials last year we will be doing further growing trials this year. Last year we grew beet, radish and…

Cutting the turf for the Botanic Cottage

On Monday the 28th of April 2014 a momentous moment took place in the long project to rebuild the Botanic Cottage – we finally broke ground! To mark…

What’s been eating my broad bean leaves?

This year seems to be a bad year for pea and bean weevil infestations. The adult weevil damages plants by eating notches out of the edge of the…

Bedding frost farcast

If the forecast is to be believed we are in for a few cold nights at the end of the week. If you bought your bedding plants over…

Hedge your bets 5 of 5: Maintenance

  Maintenance Maintain a weed free root zone. Water establishing plants in a prolonged dry spell. Only cut when the bird nesting season is over. Forming the shape…

Chilean Boquila Vine at the RBGE – Does our plant mimic the other plants around it?

I was reading an online articles in National Geographic  and Science about a Chilean Vine Boquila that can change it’s leaf shape and colour to mimic other plants around it and…

Expedition to Tajikistan

Two horticultural staff from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, John Mitchell Alpine Supervisor and team leader with Richard Brown have been joined by a member of staff from…

Hedge your bets 4 of 5

Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, the stock fence on farmland. Deciduous, spiny, flowering, berrying and impenetrable to livestock. These days, often cut with a tractor mounted flail mower. Craftsmen traditionally…

More on the importance of bryophytes

As a follow-on to my post about why bryophytes are important is this thoughtful piece by Dr Janice Glime, author of the comprehensive and freely downloadable book Bryophyte…

Rhododendron horlickianum

I have a fair interest in Rhododendron because the are such a ubiquitous Scottish garden plant, but at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh we have a world class collection…

Sylva: An exhibition celebrating our relationship with trees and forests

Opening on Thursday 17 April, Sylva, the new exhibition at the John Hope Gateway, marks the 350th anniversary of the publication of one of the earliest practical manuals on silviculture,…

Why bryophytes matter

As someone who has used taxpayers’ money to fund research on bryophytes (the collective term for mosses, liverworts and hornworts), ‘But why do bryophytes actually matter?’ is one…

Hedge your bets 3 of 5: Tsuga heterophylla

Tsuga heterophylla, the Western Hemlock, neat and dense, withstands close clipping and retains its shape. A tree of forest proportions in its native Western North America. A Pacific…

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to mark Centenary of First World War with Poppy Field

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) will mark the centenary of the start of the First World War by creating a poppy field at the centre of its…

Golfing Azaleas

If you have been watching the Masters 2014 Golf from Augusta, Georgia, USA you may have spotted the Rhododendrons (Azaleas) in flower particularly at the 12 and 13…

Hedge your bets: Holly 2 of 5, Hedge your bets: Holly, Ilex aquifolium

When does a hedge become a windbreak? The attached image illustrates Ilex growing in the Garden. As a windbreak the plants are left to grow, gaining not just…

A masterful monument

In just a few weeks work will have begun on the rebuilding of the Botanic Cottage, the only surviving building of the long lost 18th century incarnation of…

Fixed dunes – soil from sand

Sand dunes develop over time and go through a range of stages from mobile shifting sands near the sea, to fixed dunes further inland. Over time, organic matter…