Following a six-year closure for vital restoration, Edinburgh’s historic 19th-century Palm Houses at the Royal Botanic Garden have reopened to the public. The extensive overhaul involved replacing more than five thousand panes of glass, repairing corroding ironwork, and temporarily relocating hundreds of plants to protect endangered species.
Edinburgh’s famous Palm Houses have officially reopened to the public after a six-year closure required for an unprecedented botanical operation and extensive restoration work. The historic glasshouses at the Royal Botanic Garden had become leaky and rusty, necessitating a complete overhaul to protect their living collections.
Restoring 19th-Century Architecture and Relocating Hundreds of Plants
The multi-year shutdown required hundreds of plants to be carefully decanted into temporary homes before being moved back into the renovated space. Sadie Barber, glass house curator at the Royal Botanic Garden, noted that the ambitious relocation process carried inherent risks for the living collection.
I think whenever you move a plant and you take it out of the ground and then you stick it in a pot, it’s going to suffer or it’s going to get under stress. So there was a bit of trepidation when we picked up the biggest plants, moved them to another place, and left them there for a number of years.
Sadie Barber, Glass house curator at the Royal Botanic Garden
To safeguard the structures, workers replaced more than five thousand panes of glass and repaired and repainted the once-corroding ironwork. Stone work was also renovated, and a partition wall between the two houses was knocked down to create a lighter, airier environment that highlights the 19th-century architecture.
Protecting Endangered Species and Managing a Historic Tree Casualty
Prof Julia Knights, the Regius Keeper of the Botanic Garden, emphasized that the palm houses serve a crucial role in housing a wide range of families—including palms, conifers, ferns, and begonias—many of which are extinct in the wild. She noted that these plants hold significant medicinal properties for human health.
So what the palm houses are doing is helping to protect so many of these species, and many of them of course have medicinal properties for human health. So if we don’t save these we are also potentially not helping to save humanity, so it’s super important.
Prof Julia Knights, Regius Keeper of the Botanic Garden
While the vast majority of the collection survived the transition, the restoration saw one major casualty: an over 200 years old
Sabal palm tree that had grown too tall for the glass house and could not be safely transplanted or stored. However, seedlings were kept, and one of the tree’s descendants is now growing in its place.
David Knott, director of horticulture at the Botanic Garden, described the difficult decision regarding the giant palm as one of the hardest, most poignant parts of the whole process
. He expressed optimism that the newly planted descendant, housed under a taller glass roof, will thrive in the redesigned space as visitors return to experience one of Edinburgh’s most iconic features.
