Archivists' Garden

The ScotlandsPeople Centre Archivists' Garden was opened on Friday 25 June 2010. The event was filmed by BBC TV and featured in the popular gardening programme Beechgrove Garden.

Presenter Jim McColl declared the Archivists' Garden open, planting a symbolic tree. (For further details see our News page).

The garden lies at the heart of the ScotlandsPeople Centre. The open courtyard between General Register House and New Register House has been transformed into a unique garden planted with 57 plant species - all connected in some way to Scotland's collective memory, whether through myth and folklore, heraldry, or association with individual famous Scots.

Designed by Gross Max using the plant palette drawn up by the Royal Botanic Garden, the Archivists' Garden is open during office hours, and admission is free.

Within the Centre information is filed and indexed in an ordered, logical way. The human mind is not like that. Living memories are random and incomplete. This fact is mirrored in the garden layout which is planted in flowing patterns - to suggest the randomness of memory and to replicate the shapes on the surface of the human brain.

Detailed information about each plant is available by referring to our Archivists' Garden - Guide

The Archivists Garden was conceived and coordinated by Curator, David R Mitchell from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh who also researched and produced the interpretation.