The holiday season arrives and seeking an appropriate atmosphere for these dates we head north to Scotland to discover the [Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh](http://www.rbge.org.uk/home).
The Edinburgh Botanic Garden, second oldest only surpassed by the Oxford Botanic Garden, was founded in 1670 in the courtyard of St. Anne's Church, thanks to the donation of Sir Patrick Murray's private collection.
Today this Institution occupies four sites in the Scottish region with a collection of more than 13,000 plant varieties and 3 million species preserved in its herbarium, almost 4% of known plants. Its main research themes are Scottish biodiversity, climate change and species conservation.
In Edinburgh, 25% of the plant collection comes from tropical regions and is located in the impressive greenhouses of the Garden. Among them stand out the Palm House, in Victorian style, built in 1858 with almost 22 m in height, and the unique Front Page built in the second half of the 20th century which is almost 170 meters long.
Currently the Botanic Garden occupies an area of 28 hectares. Most of the garden is designed in the classic English landscape style, with water features simulating rivers and waterfalls, winding paths, many large trees with free form, and a collection of Asian plants accompanied by bridges and pagodas.
In 2009 the renovation project by architects Cullinan Studio and landscape architects Gross Max, for the East entrance of the park, called John Hope Gateway, brought contemporary language to the Garden. The project consisted of a small wooden and glass building for the Garden museum, designed with ambitious sustainability criteria, and an outdoor space where the aquatic plant collection can be admired arranged in water terraces characterized by their rectilinear shapes with variable angles.
Another interesting aspect of the botanical garden is that it has the characteristics of a public park. Entrance is free, its location is within the urban fabric of the city, the functionality of the division of space and its wide program of activities make it a usual walking destination for the inhabitants of the Scottish capital.
We also highlight for plant photography enthusiasts the _[Catalogue of the Living Collections](http://elmer.rbge.org.uk/bgbase/livcol/bgbaselivcol.php)_, a digital resource of high-quality images available to the public with most of the plants in the botanical collection.
In upcoming posts we will detail some of the species cultivated in the Nursery that stand out in this Scottish garden in elegant English-style plant compositions.
Images: Margherita Galante