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Arts, Heritage & CultureEdinburgh Biomes reaches milestone as Palm Houses Reopen
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has reopened its historic Palm Houses, a major milestone in the Edinburgh Biomes project.
Edinburgh Biomes is the most significant development in the Garden’s 350-year history. The project centres on restoring the Garden’s Category A Listed Victorian Palm Houses and 1960s Front Range glasshouses, both of which had fallen into disrepair. Their condition had put the Garden's collections, research and conservation work at risk. The restoration will help safeguard a living collection of more than 13,500 plant species, many of them endangered or extinct in the wild.
Gardiner & Theobald is providing Cost Management services on the project, ensuring financial oversight throughout the restoration and redevelopment process. Smith Scott Mullan designed the restoration of the Palm Houses, with Balfour Beatty as main contractor.
Following the completion of the Palm Houses, the wider initiative continues, with a new energy centre that uses ground source heat pumps to reduce carbon emissions currently under construction and design work progressing on new education and bio-discovery research glasshouses and a bio-secure plant health hub.
Kenneth Deans, partner at G&T, said: “It’s great to see part of the living collection return to these wonderfully restored buildings.”
Speaking to the BBC, Sadie Barber, glasshouse curator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, said: “It's been an enormous job, but a really well done job. So we are overjoyed.”
Images courtesy of ©RBGE
Arts, heritage and culture enrich society, wellbeing and economic growth. We help clients deliver projects that protect and enhance cultural assets while ensuring operational efficiency and sustainability.
Arts, Heritage & Culture