Tag: fifth anniversary

Edinburgh’s royal community garden celebrates five years and hundreds of educational visits

A public garden at the end of the Royal Mile is celebrating its fifth anniversary, having welcomed thousands of visitors and engaged hundreds of local children and adults in events and workshops since it opened in 2020.

The Physic Garden at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, located just outside the monarch’s official residence in Scotland, is a free-to-visit garden that can be enjoyed year-round by the people of Edinburgh and visitors to the Palace. Its fifth anniversary will be marked by an episode of the longstanding BBC Scotland gardening programme Beechgrove Garden, airing this week.

The Physic Garden is located beside the Palace’s Abbey Strand Learning Centre, and over the past five years, more than 360 pupils from schools both local and further afield have taken part in educational sessions, with children learning how plants were used historically as remedies to improve health and wellbeing.  

A further 400 ethnobotany students, members of community gardens and nature-lovers of all ages have taken part in guided visits and events, reviving the garden’s centuries-old original purpose of teaching the medicinal properties of plants. 

The Physic Garden was opened in 2020 to recreate some of the earliest recorded gardens in the Palace grounds, with three distinct sections each representing different periods in the Palace’s 900-year history.

Raised beds of herbs, flowers, and other useful plants reimagine the physic garden that was established in the Palace grounds 350 years ago by the doctors Sir Robert Sibbald and Sir Andrew Balfour, two founding members of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Created in 1670 to teach students about the medicinal properties of plants and to provide pharmacists with fresh medicinal ingredients, the Palace’s original physic garden was the first of its kind in Scotland and the forerunner to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

The new physic garden contains medicinal and culinary plants that would have grown in the 17th-century garden, including fennel – once used to aid eyesight and as an antidote to poisonous mushrooms – and lavender, bergamot and lemon balm, used for scents, dyes and insecticides.

A flowering meadow of medicinal plants including daisies, previously used for coughs, and mallows, an old treatment for scurvy, evokes the 15th-century monastic gardens of Holyrood Abbey, once one of the grandest medieval abbeys in Scotland, the ruins of which can still be seen today on a visit to the Palace.

The third area delights in late winter and spring with crocuses and tulips planted in geometric patterns, typical of 17th-century gardens. With such a variety of plants and styles, the garden has year-round appeal for locals and visitors curious to learn about local history and historic natural remedies.

Abbey Strand gardens Palace of Holyroodhouse Edinburgh.Photograph David Cheskin.

Chris Walker, Learning Manager, Royal Collection Trust, said: ‘The Physic Garden is an oasis at the end of the Royal Mile, providing a welcoming green space in the city centre where locals and visitors alike can get outside, enjoy nature and learn some fascinating local history.

‘We are delighted that almost 800 people have taken part in exciting activities where nature, science and history meet, in addition to the countless others who enjoy this free community garden every day. Like our forebears 350 years ago, we understand the benefits of spending time in nature for our physical and mental wellbeing, and we hope the garden can be enjoyed for many more years to come.’

Tying in with the anniversary, BBC Scotland’s Beechgrove Garden paid a visit to the Physic Garden, with its presenter and gardener George Anderson retracing the garden’s history alongside Emma Stead, Curator at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and Johanna Lausen-Higgins, Garden History Lecturer at the Education department of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

In the episode, which will air on BBC Scotland and BBC Two from Thursday, 17 July onwards (Monday 21 July, 14:00 on BBC Scotland, Thursday 24 July, 06:45 on BBC Two) , Anderson discovers the historic uses of the medicinal and culinary plants still growing in the garden today, including Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium verum), used in the past to repel ticks and lice in bedchambers.

He also views a rare copy of the Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s archives – a catalogue of the 3,000 plants growing in the Physic Garden in the 1680s.  

Physic garden Abbey Strand building Holyroodhouse,Edinburgh.Photograph David Cheskin.29.09.2020.

Royal Collection Trust will offer a programme of events and school sessions in the Physic Garden celebrate the anniversary:

Flower Arranging Workshop

24 July 2025, 09:30–12:00

After a tour of the garden’s flowers, florist and Royal Warrant holder Lottie Longman will show participants how to harvest foliage from the wildflower meadow to create a bouquet to take home.

Floral Wreaths Workshop

3 September 2025, 09:30–12:00

After a tour of the Physic Garden, Lottie Longman will teach participants how to create beautiful wreaths of freshly picked flowers, which can be dried naturally at home.

Plants, Painting and Potions Schools Session

Available for schools to book in termtime, 1 hour

In this outdoor learning session, pupils will learn how the canons of Holyrood Abbey lived 900 years ago, growing flowers, herbs and vegetables to eat and concoct natural remedies. Children will learn how to use quills and gather flowers, leaves and twigs to make and record their own remedy.

Holyrood’s Herbal Hospital Schools Session

Available for schools to book in termtime, 2 hours

School groups will learn how Holyrood Abbey’s medieval canons grew medicinal plants to help and heal their local community, before hearing the story of the two 17th-century Scottish doctors who created the Physic Garden and making their own traditional remedy. The visit includes access to the Physic Garden, the Palace of Holyroodhouse Gardens, Holyrood Abbey, and the Abbey Strand Learning Centre.

Learning Resources

Free learning resources including worksheets and scavenger hunt trails are available to download for all schools and visitors to the garden.

Five years on from the pandemic – the workers who kept us going and the fight they still face

There are moments that will stay with you for the rest of your life. For millions of people across our country, that was five years ago today, Sunday 23 March (writes TUC’s Natahn Oswin).

‘From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home’ – Prime Minister Boris Johnson

The essential workers who kept the country running

‘From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home’ – Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

But for many this simply wasn’t possible – due to their jobs being so essential to the country they were declared key workers and kept going into work, risking their lives and livelihoods to keep our society running.

They were the people we stood outside our doorsteps for every Thursday, clapping, banging pots and generally attempting to show our appreciation for what they kept on facing.

Honoring the NHS and social care heroes

It wasn’t just nurses and doctors, it was physios and cleaners in our hospitals, porters and midwives. So many NHS staff faced unimaginable scenarios and kept going, as best they could, to save as many lives as possible.

Meanwhile, social care – a workforce often underappreciated, grappling with zero hour contracts and minimum wages – battled to stem the tide and protect vulnerable residents from the virus, now labelled Covid-19.

The hidden struggles of key workers during Covid-19

Transport workers continued to make our national infrastructure run and many lost their lives ensuring NHS workers and social care staff could make it into their workplace.

Education staff tried their utmost to look after children and protect them whilst facing off against a government who simply did not care about their welfare, with Gavin Williamson and Boris Johnson rejecting calls for masks in schools because they were in “no surrender mode” towards trade unions.

Food manufacturing workers, textiles workers, retail staff, refuse collectors, fire staff, police staff, civil servants and many, many more played a vital role.

Many watched as colleagues lost their lives to the pandemic.

The emotional and mental health impact of the Pandemic

The consequences for many have been severe.  

I vividly remember a friend who served in our NHS during the pandemic breaking down in tears during a remembrance service, “I hadn’t realised how little I had processed it all” she said.

For many the emotional scars of the trauma they experienced as key workers will last a lifetime, the mental health impact is hard to calculate and the continuing effects of Long Covid are devastating for millions of people.

They knowingly marched into danger, often terrified, but with heads held high to tackle the biggest crisis our country, and the world, has faced since World War II.

It is a debt we can never truly repay, but that does not mean we should not try.

Why we must improve workers’ rights and protections

A decent level of statutory sick pay from day one, banning exploitative zero hour contracts and tackling the scourge of poverty pay would ensure that a future pandemic could not thrive when people are faced with the impossible choice of going into work ill or being able to feed their families, boosting our national resilience.

The dangers of underfunding public services

The pandemic was a stark reminder of how crucial public services are, revealing the dangers of underinvestment – the UK went into the pandemic unprepared and our public services were under-resourced.

Lessons from the pandemic: the need for insourcing

Recognising the risks of outsourcing is another key lesson which this government is already getting to grips with. A fragmented social care system failed thousands of care recipients and care workers.

Insourcing public services like social care will rebuild the state and allow resources to be redirected to frontline delivery, rather than corporate profits.

Join the fight for justice: share your Covid-19 experience

Long Covid should be recognised as an industrial disease.

It’s for all these reasons above the TUC are involved in the Covid-19 Public Inquiry, to stand up for working people and ensure their voices are heard.

But we need your help to make this happen.

We want to hear about your experiences of the pandemic to make sure the Inquiry knows the challenges working people faced and hope you will fill in our survey to make sure the Inquiry hears your voice.