Visit to the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh

I spent a weekend this February in Edinburgh, and came across this interesting doorstep display on my travels around the city. Some new ideas for displaying your succulents …! 

I also visited the Royal Botanic Garden. The morning I visited was bright, cold and calm, in stark contrast to the previous weekend when the garden had been ravaged by storm Eowyn. The sad remains of the garden’s tallest tree – a 166 year-old conifer – were clear to see. 

The sun was shining and the sky a bright blue but the frost remained in the shadier parts of the beds and the Rhododendrons had bowed their leaves to protect themselves from the cold. But they were also covered in buds, waiting to burst forth in a few weeks time.

There was plenty of winter colour – silvery Cornus stems, a Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ promising spring and a wonderful Sarcococca saligna  providing a splash of bright yellow/green.

If you look carefully under the trees, there is a carpet of snowdrops beginning to appear. 

Carolyn H