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Black nightshade trials
Tiina harvesting black nightshade in October 2016. Visitors to the Garden have been asking questions about this year’s Really Wild Veg trial plots that contain various black nightshade species. Jan,...
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PROTREE: Computer games and tree health
PROTREE is using Scots pine as an example to explore how forestry can encourage resilience in our tree populations. Tackling the tree health problems caused by an ever expanding number of new pests and...
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Big Picnic: Thought for Food
The new Botanics Market Garden produces fresh fruit and vegetables for the catering offer available to visitors and staff. Thinking about food is something we all do everyday when we get hungry. We are...
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Thought for Food: Overcoming Barriers
Today the media is covering a story about vegetable shortages here in the UK due to poor weather in southern Europe. This is a timely reminder to us all that food should not be taken for granted and...
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Thought for Food: Reflections
Gigi with freshly harvested produce. As placement students from the University of Edinburgh at the Royal Botanic Gardens, our first day was far from conventional. Cristina was “amazed and entranced by...
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Thought for Food: Charity spotlight
Blog by Fanni Barocsi, University of Edinburgh student Charities around Scotland and other parts of the world play a vital role regarding food security in local communities. Here I provide an overview...
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Thought for Food: Broadening your horizons
Blog by Andy Crofts of the Big Picnic project I think I am an adventurous eater but I’ve always understood that some plants are poisonous and that applies to some bits of even my favourite food plants....
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Strange fruit offer lifeline to rare elms
If you are visiting the Botanics in 2017 you might see some curious objects hanging in the elm trees. This is not an art installation, but in fact part of a programme to propagate some of the UK’s...
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What’s that whiff?
If you smell a nasty whiff in the air at the Botanics over the next few days it’s not the drains. It will either be the flower of our titan arum, affectionately known as New Reekie, or an experiment...
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Thought for Food: Personal stories
Andy working on the script of his digital story. People are, by their nature, storytellers. As food is a rich topic for conversation it makes sense to try to gather people’s thoughts about food through...
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Unlocking the power of poo
A short video by Dr Linda Neaves about the challenges of finding giant panda poo in the mountains of China, and how poo samples can unlock the mystery of the pandas diet and bamboo diversity. Panda...
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Botanical discovery in Nepal
In August 2017 Dr Colin Pendry led an expedition to Bajura, a remote district of Nepal. This short film is about the challenges of reaching the higher altitudes where the promise of new plant...
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Alpine blue-sow-thistle conservation
Reintroduction of the rare and threatened alpine blue-sow-thistle to the Cairngorms Natioanl Park is described in a short film by Dr Aline Finger.
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Twenty-five square metres for biodiversity
As the second BioBlitz approaches on 9 June our thoughts are turning to the wild plants and animals that find a home at the Botanics. An incredible 999 wild species have been recorded over the years,...
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Crowd-sourcing finds new UK tree pest within two days!
To crowdsource information and tasks is an everyday part of the interconnected online world we live in. Today scientists see, and have grasped, the opportunity to get labour intensive tasks done by...
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Protecting Potatoes: Diversity, Domestication and Darwin
Protecting Potatoes is a new plant display with interpretation for summer 2018 at the Botanics. It can be found in the Demonstration Garden and the Temperate Palm House, and has been funded by SEFARI....
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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 is a true Scottish plant. The...
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Progress with the Edinburgh Potato
Jan and Liz, Edible Gardening Project volunteers, have been continuing the quest to recreate the Edinburgh potato (Solanum x edinense). A challenge that they face is that potato flowers are extremely...
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Digging for Potato Treasure
The RBGE Harvest Festival is always an incredible display of produce from gardens all over the City, but in 2018 the Botanics had an unusual contribution to the displays – potatoes from the high Andes...
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Apple Day 10th anniversary
The Apple Day event held in the Botanic Cottage on 6 October was the tenth Apple Day run jointly by the Botanics and the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society. As a seasonal celebration of food, Apple...
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