Then and now: The staff and students at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh recreate pictures from 1900s
The photo series was captured as the Palm Houses near completion of the most ambitious restoration and development programme in the Garden's 356-year history.
Photographs of staff working in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden and historic Palm Houses in the early 1900s have been brought back to life with modern day recreations.
With one week to go until the reopening of the Palm Houses, on October 2, some of the organisation’s students and partners decided to dig into the archives and retraced the images by stepping into the same spaces where their predecessors once tended and studied the garden's rare and exotic collection, over a century ago.
As the new generation of horticulturists and scientists, they are ready to care for and research nearly 600 plant specimens returning to the Palm Houses.
The photo series is a fitting tribute as the Palm Houses near completion of the most ambitious restoration and development programme in the Garden's 356-year history.
The original Georgian and Victorian structures have undergone five years of restoration as part of the £58 million Edinburgh Biomes project, including funding from the Scottish Government and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Scotland Chair of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Dr Heather Reid, joined the collective of students to celebrate the history of the Palm Houses, recreating an image featuring a sunshine recorder positioned on the outer balcony.
Restoring the Palm Houses to their former glory has involved replacing all 5,750 panes of glass, fully restoring or replacing 600 m² of ironwork, and carrying out 500 m² of sandstone repairs.
The first set of photographs shows James Douglas McKenzie working on the Botanic Garden’s Glass Department as a probationer gardener between 1903 and 1907. This was recreated by Liam McMenemie (HN in Horticulture (Plantsmanship) tendig to the newly rehomed plants within the renovated Palm Houses.
The second set of images shows David Sydney Fish on the roof of the Temperate Palm House checking the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, captured around 1904 - 1906. The recorder works to record sunshine, with any direct sunlight being magnified by the sphere and scorching a recordable trail on the card behind it.
In the recreated image of the sunshine recorder, still in use today, Dr Heather Reid, Scotland Chair of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, checks on it on the roof of the newly renovated Palm Houses, which have now been unified as one temperate zone.
The third set of photographs shows an unnamed gardener tending to beds in front of the Glasshouse Range, taken around 1905. Chase Mathey (MSc in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants) recreated the picture tending to the paths outside the research glasshouses and renovated Palm Houses, preparing the walkway for guests to once again experience this area of the Gardens.
In the fourth set of images an unnamed member of the Herbaceous Department attends to an errand in the potting shed around 1905. In the 2026 recreation Jessica Thomson (HN in Horticulture (Plantsmanship)) works in the modern-day potting shed.
Jessica is one of many female students and staff members employed in the Gardens nowadays, whereas the first female horticulture students only began their studies in 1897.
The final set of images show Andrew R. Cosh who a probationer gardener at RBGE between 1907 and 1910, before emigrating to work at an estate in Massachusetts. Charlie Smith (MSc in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants) is pictured watering the various palms and ferns that have been planted within the renovated Palm Houses in the recreation of this original image.
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