Planning Permission and Listed Building Consent has been granted for Edinburgh Biomes, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s ambitious project to protect its unique and globally important plant collection. The £50m project involves seven new buildings and three refurbishments across two sites.

Designed by us and Nicoll Russell Studios, the project focuses on both the public and research glasshouses at the Garden. On the public side, we will conserve and refurbish the magnificent Victorian Palm Houses and the unique 1967 glasshouses with their steel lattice exo-skeleton. This succession of A-Listed nineteenth and twentieth century glasshouses will be complemented by a new, twenty-first century public glasshouse by NRS. A revised visitor route through the glasshouses will enhance the display of the plant collection to promote public understanding of plant biodiversity, conservation and research.

We have redesigned the support areas to provide a substantial new glasshouse to safeguard the research collections, an Education Centre and a Horticultural Building. We will add two further buildings on the Garden’s nearby Nursery site. The Plant Health Suite will provide a new national asset in the field of plant health and bio-security. It will receive and monitor new plant specimens collected from across the world and will contain world-class plant pathology and micro-propagation laboratories. The Sustainable Energy Centre will serve both sites and, in conjunction with the improved efficiency of the new buildings, will substantially reduce the Garden’s carbon footprint by producing both heat and electricity through a combination of ground-source heat pumps, combined heat and power engines and gas boilers.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is one of the top four botanic gardens in the world. It is an internationally renowned centre of excellence in plant biodiversity research and conservation, an education provider and a major tourist attraction. We are delighted to have helped the Garden reach this major milestone in delivering potentially the most significant project in its history.

On 08 September 2019 fifteen SSM colleagues will be taking part in this year’s Pedal For Scotland event, cycling a whopping 45 miles from Glasgow to Edinburgh! 

As a Cycle-Friendly Employer we want to encourage cycling wherever possible, and as we cycle we will be raising money for The Citadel Youth Centre in Leith.  We have started our training with some office group cycles around Edinburgh and we will be ramping up the training sessions as we build up to the big cycle in September.

The Citadel Youth Centre in Leith provides a safe place for local kids to meet friends, do fun activities and learn new skills. Their youth workers are on hand to offer advice and support to anyone who needs it. The Citadel stands up for young people, and helps them to have a say in their community.

Please have a look at our JustGiving page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/smith-scott-mullan-associates, we will be posting regular updates as our training progresses.

We are acutely aware of the impacts that the design of our urban places can have on travel behaviour, health and wellbeing and as such we want to encourage travel behaviour that will be beneficial to the city and our team. When we choose active travel (walking & cycling) to get to work we are healthier and more productive. Evidence suggests that people who cycle to work are fitter, healthier and happier.

To mark this we are making regular SSM Group Cycles, to help colleagues less experienced or maybe nervous about cycling have a chance to cycle in a safe manner.

Last Friday we all headed down to our regular haunt Seacliff, East Lothian for our annual summer BBQ. The weather was glorious and a great time was had by old and new members of the SSM family. Competitive sports were the highlight of the day with some enjoying the victories more than others. Fingers crossed for the weather next year for a bigger and better event.