Growing change at botanic garden

GARDENERS in St Andrews are shutting the glasshouses in the botanic garden to concentrate on under-threat habitats in Fife instead.

Managers at St Andrews Botanic Garden have already shut 10 glasshouses as part of a radical reimagining of the garden and the role that it plays in the community.

The rest will close next year.

The garden is focusing on education and conservation rather than the exotic plants more often associated with botanical gardens.

Beccy Middleton, garden curator, said: “The idea is that all plants are amazing. You do get the wow factor from the tropical ones with the great big leaves and big flowers and exotic things.

“But actually, all the plants that are growing around us are just as amazing. It is finding a way to communicate that to people.

“So people in Fife can look around and be super proud of them because they are already fascinating. You don’t need to go somewhere really exotic to see something amazing.”

The bold approach – part of the Tangled Bank project – has helped the garden achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

The site now only uses 2% of the energy that it did before the work.

The plants from the glasshouses were audited and shared with other botanic collections in Scotland, including Dundee Botanic Gardens.

Dr Harry Watkins, garden director, said the achievement has set “a new benchmark for climate action in botanic gardens”.

The garden is also reviewing its outreach programme, with a view to bringing hundreds more children in to learn about the habitats to be found and studied in the garden.

Visitors now enter a wood meadow before cutting through a sand dune – one of the threatened Fife ecosystems now at the heart of the reimagined attraction.

Other native plants to appear include creeping willow, ragged robin and various sedges.