Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) has reopened its palm houses after a five-year, £23.5m restoration, installing 5,750 panels of toughened glass to shield its plant collection from Scottish winter storms. The work preserves nearly all of the original sandstone and wrought iron shell of the 356-year-old garden, the second oldest in Britain after Oxford.
Storm damage and safety measures
Before the renovation, high winds could send hundreds of glass panels crashing to the greenhouse floor, and nobody was allowed inside when winds exceeded 30mph. "We've had plants that have essentially been decapitated by falling bits of glass," said Sadie Barber, the glasshouse curator at RBGE. "You go into one of these tropical spaces in winter and there's icy air coming in. It's traumatic for those of us who put decades into caring for these plants. A storm can literally just wipe them out."
The horticultural team had installed a net inside the palm houses before closure in case panels fell from the weathered structure. The new panels are not bulletproof but are strong enough to resist a bird strike.
Restored interior and historical features
Inside the part-Georgian, part-Victorian building, more than 600 temperate plants have returned. The air is purified by ferns that naturally remove toxins, and temperature and humidity are still controlled by the original pulleys and winches. "We have made it one vast cathedral-like space for temperate plants," said Prof Julia Knights, the garden's regius keeper and royally appointed chief executive. She highlighted a tree fern from Tasmania with a Scottish liverwort growing on its stem, noting such plants can grow outdoors at Logan on Scotland's west coast due to the oceanic climate.
Founded by two physicians in 1670 to teach doctors about medicinal plants, RBGE has become a major collection of plant biodiversity. Its research glasshouses contain rare ginger species, bananas, blueberries and dozens of begonias. The garden is a global authority on rhododendrons and ferns, houses species extinct in the wild, and its scientists helped pioneer DNA barcoding for identifying plant species. Arthur Conan Doyle studied here, and conservation is now the primary focus.
Future upgrades needed
Despite the restored palm houses, many other glasshouses are decades past their intended lifespan and await upgrades. Leaks from Scottish rain rot plant rootstock, sometimes killing plants. Last year, horticulturalists were barred from the greenhouses for 20 days due to high winds; in 2026, they have been shut out 15 times. Staff often wear hard hats and safety gear to remove broken glass.
"The glasshouses are the one thing we don't want to break. It's the plants inside that suffer," said Barber. "I was looking at one of our records the other day of a plant we lost in the lowland tropical house. It just had 'storm' written next to it. It had either suffered from the cold, or even been cut by falling glass."
