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Shoreline updates

September 12, 2019  |  By Charlotte Johnson

A visit to the RBGE Nursery

Plants like Scots lovage and meadow cranesbill have large seeds which are easy to separate from the plant.
Plants like Scots lovage and meadow cranesbill have large seeds which are easy to separate from the plant.

Many thanks to our super colleague Martine Borge, the Scottish Native Plant Horticulturist here at the Botanics, for hosting a group of residents from Wardie Bay Resident Association today. We had a really interesting visit to the Nursery and learned about collecting and growing Scottish Native wildflowers from seed.

First off, we had a special behind-the-scenes tour of the polytunnels at the nursery, and heard about Martine’s work to protect and conserve rare Scottish plants. We particularly enjoyed hearing about RBGEs work growing and researching alpine blue sow thistle, cicerbita aplina. You can read more here. The group were also interested to see some Arran whitebeams, sorbus arranensis, grown at RBGE which are soon to be planted at Wardie Bay along the new cycle path installed by the City of Edinburgh Council.

Inside the polytunnel at the nursery. Cicerbita alpina is in the foreground and sorbus in the background.

Then, we had a lesson in growing native plants from seed. Martine had collected some plants which had gone to seed such as Scots lovage, black knapweed, water avens and meadow cranesbill. We learned how best to collect the seed from the plant (and also wasted lots of time having a look at how intricate the seeds are under a hand lens!), the rules for collecting responsibly, how to make our own paper envelopes for storing seed (as this is better for the seed than using plastic), how to prepare compost, fill up seed trays, sow our seeds, top with grit to protect from frost and even how best to water our seeds once sown – who knew we’d been using watering cans wrong all these years?!

 

The wildflowers Martine had collected for us.
Plants like Scots lovage and meadow cranesbill have large seeds which are easy to separate from the plant.
All potted up, we then topped our seeds with grit.

We wish the Wardie Bay Residents Association well in going on to grown their own wildflowers! There are lots of interesting plants at the beach at Wardie (as discovered on our wildflower walk in the summer) from which they can collect seed. We’ll be keeping in touch with them over the coming months and look forward to working with them again to introduce some of their seedlings to their local area.

 

Article by Charlotte Johnson

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Regular updates from the Edinburgh Shoreline project and 6 community groups. We welcome guest postings, so if you’d like to contribute please contact us.

Posts

  • Forthline exhibits at Royal Botanic Gardens Harvest Festival – 19th Sept 2021 Wednesday, 29, Sep
  • Jennie WIP 11
    Join our next art challenge as we create an illustrated story of the Forth’s coast. Friday, 26, Mar
  • Square 16 Monday, 22, Feb
  • 2
    Seafield prom grass is looking untidy – that might actually be a good thing! Sunday, 8, Dec
  • The view out to the Bass Rock
    A visit to the Scottish Seabird Centre Tuesday, 19, Nov

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Edinburgh Shoreline is an exciting, community centred initiative celebrating the city’s 27km coastline.

We are rediscovering its fascinating and often unknown history and the rich plant and animal life that survives against the odds in unexpected places, and inspiring people to explore their coast and take responsibility for its future health.

 

 

We are very grateful to our current partners and funders

We are very grateful to have been supported and funded so well in the past.

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