Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

Founded in 1670, the Botanic Gardens is a breathtaking experience of the world of plants.

The gardens are an amazing 70 acres plant complex situated in the middle of Edinburgh with outstanding views across the city to Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat.

Visiting the Botanic Gardens provides a tour around the world’s plants in the centre of Edinburgh.

Getting To Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

By bus to the East Gate: Numbers 23 and 27 go directly past the gate
By bus to the West Gate: Take numbers 24, 29 or 42 to Raeburn Place, then walk by way of St Bernard’s Row, Arboretum Avenue to Arboretum Place. Alternatively walk down Portgower Place to Inverleith Park. Walk straight into the park pas the the duck pond on your left to the path crossroads then turn right, where it’s a five minute straight walk to Garden (you’ll see the gardens in the distance)
By car to the East Gate: Park on Inverleith Place or on one of the adjoining streets. Parking here is limited and expensive but is free on Sundays
By car to the West Gate: Park on Arboretum Place or on an adjoining street. Parking here is much cheaper than parking at the East Gate and is also free on Sundays

Visiting The Botanic Gardens

The ‘Botanics’, as the garden is called locally in Edinburgh, are free to visit.

If you’re wondering what to wear to the Botanics, don’t worry. Treat a visit like you would treat a visit to your local park. In other words, wear what’s comfortable although I’d probably advise against heels, especially if you want to wander around the wonderful rock garden.

Dogs, however, are not allowed in the garden except for trained assistance dogs.

The garden has two entrances. The main gate is called the John Hope Gateway and is on Arboretum Place, on the western edge of the garden. The secondary entrance is the gate on Inverleith Row, at the eastern side.

Entering through the John Hope Gateway, you have the option of visiting the shop, restaurant and the cavernous exhibition space, where there are permanent and temporary exhibits about the garden and its work. You can bypass the exhibition centre and shop and enter the garden directly.

The eastern gate can be found on Inverleith Place and entry is through an ornate gated entrance to the garden. As you enter the garden you’ll pass the East Gate Lodge cafe, where you can sit inside or outside, enjoy a drink and gaze over the wonderful vista in front of you.

Botanic Garden Highlights

Take your time to visit:

Any one or more of the 10 glasshouses including the Victorian Temperate Palmhouse and Tropical Palmhouse. With 10 different climatic zones, from steamy tropics to arid desert, the glasshouses are home to over 3,000 exotic plants from around the world.
The amazing fossilised tree that lies in front of the glasshouses
The Rock Garden
The Alpine Houses
The Woodland Garden
The Arboretum or tree collection
The Chinese Hillside
The Rhododendron Collection
The Scottish Native Plants Collection in the Heath Garden.

The Main Gate: John Hope Gateway

The new gateway to the Botanics was completed in 2009 and opened by the Queen in 2010. What an amazing space it is. Not for nothing has it been included in the Royal Institute of Architecture’s list of the top 100 buildings built in Scotland in the last 100 years.

My favourite part of the new Gateway is the wall. You will pass this huge slate wall as you exit the Gateway centre or if you decide not to go inside. This amazing wall, built without any cement or mortar, what in Scotland is known as a dry-stone wall, guides you up the path as you enter the garden and is a wonder to behold.

The Gateway was designed to create spaces for exhibitions, education, events, a new restaurant and a shop.

As well the amazing slate wall, the building has a huge 60m curved glass wall which provides views onto the biodiversity garden, a Real Life Science Studio and a beautiful curving staircase in the centre of the building, which creates different images in people’s minds – from a vine to a strand of DNA.

Why Are Edinburgh Botanic Gardens Famous?

The gardens contain one of the richest plant collections on earth in a beautiful mid-town setting and can be accessed and viewed by anyone for free.

But it’s not just the collection of plants that make the gardens famous and a must-see attraction for visitors.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, to give it its proper name, delivers world-leading plant science, conservation and education programmes. It’s mission is to Explore, Conserve and Explain the World of Plants for a Better Future, identifying plant species at risk from destruction and those which could benefit humankind.

Fun plant fact: they identify around 36 plants every year which are new to science, ie these plants have never been classified before. That’s amazing until you consider that around 20 per cent of all flowering plant species in the world have yet to be discovered and described. And that’s not including the hidden world of fungi, which is largely unexplored.

The Botanic Garden isn’t new. Although it opened at its present site in 1820, it’s been around since 1670, at various sites around Edinburgh.

A Brief History Of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

If you travel to the bottom of the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace you’ll see a re-creation of the 17th century ‘Physic Garden’ that was planted there by Andrew Balfour and Robert Sibbald, and which was the forerunner of today’s Botanic Garden.

It quickly outgrew the little plot near the Palace and moved to another famous spot in Edinburgh – the site of today’s Waverley railway station. There’s a plaque on the building opposite platform 5 that records the garden being there.

At this time, Edinburgh was very different than it is now and where Princes Street Gardens are now was once the site of the Nor Loch, the great man-made lake built on the orders of King James III to protect Edinburgh from invasion. Unfortunately, the Nor Loch turned into a stinking body of water as Edinburgh grew and dumped its sewage and much else into it.

And it was to eastern end of the loch that the botanic garden moved to in 1675. Disaster struck in 14 years later when a dam burst and filthy water flooded the garden. When the water subsided, the garden was ruined with many of the plants so assiduously collected over the years, dead.

It recovered and in 1763 John Hope was appointed its new keeper. Hope is now immortalised in the John Hope Gateway in today’s garden. Hope moved the garden from its town centre site to the cleaner environs of Leith Walk, the long street that was built to connect Edinburgh with its port of Leith.

Hope really established the Botanic Garden here and grew medicinal plants, built an aquatic pond, planted trees and constructed conservatories. In these, Hope was able to grow exotic plants such as bananas, tea and coffee.

As well as the new gateway, there’s another link in today’s Garden to John Hope and the Garden he established at Leith. While you’re walking in the Garden, be sure to visit the Botanic Cottage, near the north wall of the Garden. This cottage was once the original entrance to the Botanic Garden at its old Leith Walk site and it’s an incredible story of how the building came to be at today’s Garden.

When the Garden moved from Leith to Inverleith, the entrance was abandoned but the building was never demolished. By 2008, however, it had fallen into disrepair and was scheduled to be knocked down. It was saved by a local community campaign, carefully dismantled and moved, stone by stone, to be rebuilt in today’s Botanic Garden.

Scottish Regional Botanic Gardens

If you’re travelling around Scotland, you might be able to visit one of the three Regional Botanic Gardens. They’re called Benmore, Dawyck and Logan.

Each Garden is different in topography, soils and climate enabling an exceptionally wide range of plants to be grown. Together they constitute one of the richest plant collections on earth.

Benmore Botanic Garden

Benmore Botanic Garden is on the Cowal Peninsula, set in the beautiful Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park. Although you can drive overland to Benmore Garden it’s much easier and quicker to catch the ferry from Gourock to Dunoon.

Benmore Garden is the highland garden with spectacular views. Set in 120 acres (49 hectares) of hillside amongst trees like giant redwoods, Scots pines and Douglas firs. You’ll also see a huge rhododendron garden (go in Spring for the best view of the amazing flowers) and amazing ferns in the Victorian Fernery.

And if you’re looking up, you might well see a golden eagle circling overhead.

Dawyck Botanic Garden

Dawyck Botanic Garden is the closest garden to Edinburgh. Nestling near the little borders town of Peebles, it’s only 28 miles south of Edinburgh. Get there by car, bus or even bike.

Dawyck has beautiful seasonal flower displays so depending on what time of year you visit you’ll be rewarded with dazzling displays of colour. If moss is your thing, head for the Heron Wood Reserve and the Cryptogamic Sanctuary, the world’s first reserve for mosses, liverworts, lichens and fungi.

Logan Botanic Garden

Logan Botanic Garden is on the very tip of southern Scotland, near the town of Stranraer.

Warmed by the Gulf Stream, the garden holds many exotic plants that flourish here in a part of Scotland that’s just a little warmer than anywhere else. Walk through an antipodean forest of palm trees and tree ferns, groves of eucalyptus and take in the exotic plants in the amazing Victorian conservatory.

Logan is an offshoot of the Edinburgh Garden’s Living Collection, which supports research education and conservation of exotic and endangered species of plants.