The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s first Palm House opened in 1834, an eight-sided glasshouse that stood nearly 60 feet (18 metres) high. It followed the Garden’s relocation to Inverleith in the 1820s, when more space was needed to house its expanding collection of exotic plants. It did not stay big enough for long.
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Within about two decades, several of the palms inside had grown so tall that their leaves began pushing through the glass roof. Photographs from 1855 show fronds breaking out above the building, reaching for space that simply was not there. Even a glasshouse that had been the largest in Britain was too small for what it was meant to hold.
Parliament responded by voting funds in 1855 for a second, much larger Palm House next door. Designed by Robert Matheson and completed in 1858, it was built from pale sandstone quarried at Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, with a Tuscan-style façade and a domed roof of curvilinear iron rafters. At 72 feet (21.95 metres), it is the tallest traditional Palm House in Britain.
The principal gardener at the time, James McNab, believed solid masonry would prevent rapid cooling and provide shade for the successful cultivation of plants.
He also believed that too much sunlight was not good for growing palms, so the front of the glasshouse was made to face west. The Palm House’s early plantings included bananas, bamboo, a date palm, sugar cane and figs, alongside the palms it was built to house.
What visitors see at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh today began with one record-sized glasshouse that was still too small, followed by a second one built to give the palms more room. Together, they show how the plants, not the architects, shaped the size and design of these buildings.