The Palm Houses at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh opened their doors again today after a five-year restoration effort, marking the completion of a major phase of the £58 million Edinburgh Biomes programme. This work represents one of the most extensive capital undertakings in the garden’s 356-year story, and it also sets the stage for further work on the site’s remarkable collection of roughly 13,500 living plants.
Professor Julia Knights, who serves as the 17th Regius Keeper, said the event signalled the end of “painstaking restoration work” that had been preceded by years of planning and a broad fundraising campaign. During the closure, specialist teams moved about 800 different plant species, including a variety of palms and ferns, into temporary research glasshouses. After the work was finished, 600 specimens were later returned, with particular attention given to the most vulnerable and rare varieties.
One of the toughest jobs involved taking down a towering palm that had outgrown the space it occupied. Although the mature trunk was felled, the seeds were collected and a young descendant, identified as a Sabal mexicana, was planted close to where its parent had stood. The work also required the replacement of 5,750 panes of glass, each digitally measured as they were all slightly different sizes, and replaced with replica-sized glass.
The scheme joined the Georgian tropical house and the Victorian temperate house to create a single, cohesive glasshouse environment. Expert craftspeople restored 600 square metres of iron work and 500 square metres of sandstone.
Preview tours held in September attracted an eager crowd, and the keeper noted the palpable excitement of visitors returning after years of absence. The Palm Houses embody the very best of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a commitment to conservation, scientific excellence, horticultural expertise, and public engagement.
