The Botanical Gardens and Portobello Beach

amy doyle

13 May 2024 — 3 min read

I've fallen in love with the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. All my gardening friends, I wish you could be here with me experiencing the brilliance of the azalea copses in bloom. My pictures don't begin to capture it all (of course). Part of the magic, I think, is just sitting with them on one of the many park benches throughout the Gardens.

The Botanical Gardens are a total of 70 acres of glory, and I think you can tell I got caught up in the acres and acres of azaleas. Every corner I turned brought me explosions of color and wonder. And then...

I gasped. Somehow, from somewhere back in my childhood, I knew exactly what this was. The tree lined streets of small towns across the US...an elm tree!

EB White wrote "I think elm-birth is the prettiest fairy tale in the city's wonderbook." These stately shade trees were planted by the thousands across the US. But Dutch elm disease killed nearly 70 million trees between 1930 and 1980 when the trees had almost entirely become extinct. One of the theories around their almost total annihilation looks at these tree-lined streets that we all know and loved, may have made the close connections of the trees and their extending root systems to be super spreaders of the disease. There are some pockets of the US, such as Portland, OR and Castine, MA where experimental insecticides and vigilant care have preserved some of the 100 foot, almost 300 year old trees. Thankfully disease resistant saplings are being planted again in parts of the US.

And the Botanical Gardens kept showing me miracles, upon miracles...

The Gardens are a hop, skip and a jump from our apartment (or round trip 7,000 steps on my fit bit). I've visited three times so far in the month and a half since we've been there. I think I'll be strolling thru the gardens a few more times before we leave.

Krys always says she likes to plant a garden anywhere she goes, even if she's not there very long. I really appreciate that. We will never see the elm tree saplings get to their 100 foot heights in our lifetimes, but I have deeply appreciated the work of the gardeners who started the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh almost 300 years ago.

Portobello Beach

I've been missing my bike. And my bike friends...

I met a woman at my bus stop, and, while in a conversation about bikes, gave me a card for Community Bikes. I didn't have much time to look into it before Craig and I took advantage of one of the most beautiful days, so far, and headed out to Portobello Beach (I've been calling it mushroom beach 🙂). We intended to simply walk the promenade, but ran right smack into Community Bikes! They offered us their two last bikes, which was perfectly fine with us, and off we went, biking along the sea-scape! Ahhhhhh!!