Lost Gardens Exhibition
1 August 2013
A new exhibition charting the history and cultural significance of the ‘lost gardens’ of Scotland opens this weekend at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
The outdoor exhibition uses stunning images to explore gardens that have now vanished from the landscape, along with the personalities and tastes of the individuals who created them. While many of the gardens featured in the exhibition have long gone – vulnerable to changing fashions and needs, or derelict through lack of maintenance – their cultural significance remains.
Sitting within a wider British and European context, gardens respond to ideas embedded in religion, science, art and literature, while incorporating distinctive elements of Scottish history, climate and natural landscape.
Many of the gardens featured in the exhibition were discovered and documented through the RCAHMS continuous aerial survey programme.
The exhibition covers some 1,500 years of garden history, and includes the earliest known monastic gardens from the sixth and seventh centuries; royal gardens and the gardens of the Scottish nobility; the horticultural fashions of the Victorians including ‘ferneries’, rockeries, swimming ponds and grottos; and public parks, city gardens, allotments and open spaces, including the former roof garden on Princes Street in Edinburgh.
Speaking about the exhibition, curator and RCAHMS architectural historian Clare Sorensen said, “Gardens are one of the most important elements in the cultural history of Scotland. Like any art form, they provide an insight into social, political and economic fashions, they intimately reflect the personalities and ideals of the individuals who created them and they capture the changing fortunes of successive generations of monarchs and noblemen.
"Yet they remain fragile features of the landscape, easily changed, abandoned or destroyed, leaving little or no trace.”
Ian Edwards, Head of Exhibitions and Events at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh said, "Historic gardens are a great draw for visitors to Scotland and I am sure that there will be a lot of interest in the exhibition from tourists who will be visiting the Garden over the next few months, as well as from our resident audience who have a real appetite for anything to do with our unique Scottish garden heritage."
The exhibition draws on the book Scotland's Lost Gardens, published in September 2012 by RCAHMS and written by Marilyn Brown, an archaeological investigator who specialised in the study of historic gardens across Scotland through aerial and ground survey over the last thirty years. You can also browse some of the best images from the exhibition in our new online gallery.
