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Restored Victorian palm houses to reopen at Royal Botanic Garden

RBGE A general view of the planned renovation of the palm houses at the Botanic gardens in edinburgh.RBGE
The palm houses will open in October after a five-year renovation project

The historic Victorian palm houses at the Royal Botanic Garden (RBGE) in Edinburgh are to reopen in the autumn after a five-year restoration project.

Work to install an upgraded heating system aimed at beating freezing Scottish winters and about 5,000 new panes of glass began in 2021 as part of a £20m refurbishment.

RBGE said about 600 species of rare flora had been moved from the 200-year-old hothouses before the replanting process started.

They will now open their doors to visitors again on a ticketed basis from 2 October.

RBGE said: "After years of careful restoration, the Palm Houses will reopen to the public.

"We can't wait to share this special space as a place to unfurl, unfold and unwind among the ferns and palms."

The A-listed palm houses opened in the 1800s to store and display RBGE's vast collection of tropical plants.

Water ingress caused by historic wear and tear to the facility, combined with increasingly extreme winter weather conditions, risked the long-term health of the plants.

The refurbishment work, which forms part of the wider Biomes Project, also saw partitions removed to open up the space and the restoration of rusting metalwork.

RBGE A general view inside the renovated palm houses.RBGE
Thousands of plants were moved and replanted during the project

About 40,000 plants were removed from the hothouses at the start of the project.

Some were stored in another hothouse during that time, under close monitoring by horticulturists.

A replanting project, which began in January, saw the gardens' experts use pioneering techniques to restore the plants to their previous home.

However, some did not survive the move.

A full shot of the sabal palm at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh
The 200-year-old sabal palm was felled during the work

A 60ft (18 metre) sabal palm, originally brought to Edinburgh from Bermuda in the early 1800s was among the plants felled during the initial phase of refurbishment.

That came after several years of carefully "shaving" parts of the tree so it did not continue growing through the glass canopy of the hot house.

Some of the wood from its trunk has been preserved for educational purposes, while other parts of the tree were passed to the gardens' artists in residence.