Royal Botanic Garden: Edinburgh Biomes

Edinburgh Biomes, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s ambitious project to protect its globally important plant collection, encompasses three new buildings and seven refurbishments across two sites to improve the visitor’s experience, enhance the institution’s research facilities and substantially reduce energy consumption.

The £90m project focuses on public glasshouses and research facilities. On the public side, we are conserving and restoring the magnificent Victorian palm houses, reputedly the tallest in the world, and the unique 1967 glasshouses with their steel lattice exo-skeleton. These structures are Category A Listed as prime examples of nineteenth and twentieth-century glasshouse technology, requiring our thorough understanding of their historic significance to sensitively address the limitations of their performance. A re-planned visitor route will show off the remarkable buildings and enhance the display of the plant collection to promote public understanding of biodiversity, conservation and research.

We have redesigned the research facilities to increase capacity within the constrained site. A substantial new research glasshouse to modern standards will provide a flexible and safe home for the ever-changing collection of living plants which are the heart of the Botanics’ internationally important research and conservation work. Meanwhile, we will refurbish the adjoining support buildings to retain their embodied carbon.

We have designed two further buildings on an adjacent site. The Plant Health Suite will be a national asset in plant health and bio-security. It will receive and monitor specimens collected world-wide and will contain high-containment plant pathology and micro-propagation laboratories.

The energy centre will produce heat for both sites and, in conjunction with the improved efficiency of the new buildings, will substantially reduce the Botanics’ carbon footprint.

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 be part of the most significant construction project in its history.