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BigPicnic at Parliament
The BigPicnic project, funded by an EU Horizon 2020 grant, has involved 16 botanic gardens working with people to explore the issue of food insecurity with the aim of getting their voices heard by...
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Anticipating the new potato season
On a cold and frosty January day one can’t help thinking about the new vegetable growing season that is yet to unfold. In fact, preparations for the new season continue right through winter. For the...
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Microsculpture on your door step
Guest blog by Ashleigh Whiffin, entomologist (NMS) The breath-taking Microsculpture exhibition of insect portraits opens at RBGE later this month and it’s no secret that I’m a little bit excited! As...
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Orchid appears in Living Lawn
Next to the Front Range and within sight of the Library and Herbarium two small squares of lawn have been transformed into flower-rich ‘living lawns’ as part of an experiment to enhance lawns for...
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Scent of seduction
With the flowering of our titan arum for the third time this summer minds have been turning to how we can help our plant, fondly called New Reekie, to reproduce. As is the case for most plants this...
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Edinburgh’s potato: flowers at last
Having waited a full year to see the fruits of our labours in a potato breeding project we have finally been rewarded with success today. Our aim was to recreate the Edinburgh potato (Solanum...
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Origin of the Edinburgh potato
The Edinburgh potato is a small piece of the Garden’s historical association with food crops and food security dating back to the time of our Regius Keeper Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour (1853-1922) in the...
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Edinburgh potato faces late blight
A new twist in the story of the Edinburgh potato (Solanum xedinense) could be the most interesting yet. Late blight (Phytophthora infestans) symptoms were found on many of the potatoes growing next to...
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From Indonesia to Edinburgh – An orchids story
In a cloud forest on the Indonesian island of Seram an orchid was collected during an expedition led by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1986. The living specimen made it safely back to Edinburgh...
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Size isn’t everything
The tatties produced by the ‘Edinburgh potato’ were recently revealed to the world on BBC Landward and it’s fair to say this potato is not destined to be appearing in the shops; it is rather small to...
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A botanical wild cat
The Scottish native wild apple (Malus sylvestris), like the Scottish wild cat, could be regarded as being under threat from interbreeding with its domesticated counterpart. In the cat’s case this...
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Spread hope and joy with #plantrainbow
The rainbow symbol is used to represent peace, hope, joy, inclusion and diversity. During the current public health crisis, created by the Covid-19 virus, it has also come to represent solidarity with...
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#plantrainbow – Primrose
The primrose, Primula vulgaris, is one of the most evocative and widely-known heralds of spring. If you are lucky enough to know a wild place where this beautiful native plant grows now is the time to...
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#plantrainbow – true blue
Remembering the colours of the rainbow in the correct sequence is a memory challenged easily solved with this little rhyme ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’, giving us – Red, Orange, Yellow,...
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Connecting with plants
Greg Kenicer and Marjorie Lotfi Gill in conversation for Book Week Scotland To mark Book Week Scotland 2020, botanist and author Greg Kenicer from the Garden’s Education team chats to poet, performer...
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Eat your sea greens
Seaweed has been a traditional foraged food in coastal Scottish communities for as long as people have inhabited the coast. Despite being nutritious and abundant it became associated with scratching a...
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Blazing the apple trail
The Garden’s 2021 Harvest Festival includes a short self-guided trail on the origins and future of the apple linked to work on the Darwin Tree of Life project. As the trail will only be available on...
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Backing nature for climate at COP26
This month the world looks to Glasgow for signs of progress with tackling the climate emergency. Although the negotiations must focus on the transition to a low-carbon economy through issues such as...
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Giants, genomes and true grit
We assign human qualities to animals without a second thought. The wise owl and the cunning fox will produce a smile, even though we know this is just a way of making meaning and building emotional...
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Biodiversity at Little Sparta
The artist Ian Hamilton Finlay created a garden in the hills near Biggar that he called Little Sparta in response to the characterization of Edinburgh as the Athens of the north. On Friday 17 and...
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