Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

Last week we were in Edinburgh for a few days staying in a beautiful Georgian house in the New Town.  The bed and breakfast where we were staying had access to gardens leading down to the Water of Leith from where we could walk quite easily to the Botanic gardens. It was a beautiful sunny morning with a golden light. The gardens are free to enter - you only have to pay for entrance to the glass houses, which on the day we visited were also free as they were not all accessible that day.

This shows how blue the sky was and it provided a great contrast to the golden autumn colours. The gardens have been on this site since1820 and they extend for 70 acres. There is an enormous beech hedge which was being cut which has walkways cut into it that are like mini tunnels.

Outside the glasshouses was Britain's largest plant fossil, found in Craigleith quarry where stone was used for Edinburgh's New Town.

Plants still in flower included this collection of Salvia leucuntha Midnight.

The trees were generally magnificent and looked so stunning in the sunlight.

We walked back into Edinburgh along the Water of Leith and spotted an Antony Gormley figure in the water. It is part of his work 6 Times. The figure was almost hidden and had a collection of twigs and wood caught up behind it. There are 4 in the Water of Leith and they are a useful measure of how high the river is flowing. The 6 figures are placed between the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the sea.