• IN THE GARDEN •
• IN THE GREENHOUSES •
Life, with the garden
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland • • • Visit: May 2017
In a way, one could say this is where it all started. My collection of botanic gardens. Of course, I had visited others before. But this is where I become so obsessively systematic about it. The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh in 2013. Together with dad, we marveled at the lush June flower beds, and how every single corner of the garden seemed to have a plan, every nook a place to discover strange and exotic plants in. I then continued down on the continent by train, and visited seven other botanic gardens, but none of them could beat Edinburgh.
Revisiting in 2017, my opinion about it did not change. It is a beautiful place, and I could spend days there, roaming the groves and studying the intricacies of the tropical plants in the greenhouses.
I bring books to botanic gardens. Sitting on a bench under the hanging branches of a willow in one of the greenhouses, reading “Ancillary Justice” by Ann Leckie, breathing in the fragrant, humid air – for a moment fooling myself that I could be in an exotic place about to go on an adventure. Escapism, I guess, in a way – but what is wrong with that when it makes your heart beat slower and your breathing suddenly feel lighter.
I believe in the calm of a leaf. And the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh has leaves in plenty.
Katja Malmborg 