In all my years of living three miles away from St Andrews, or visiting St Andrews, or studying in St Andrews I never once visited the Botanic Garden. In fact I didn't know it was there for the longest time. The town isn't huge by any stretch of the imagination, but just to the south of the Kinness Burn, which at this point meanders through a pretty well-off area, stands eighteen and a half acres of delightful green space, hidden from view by an old, disused railway embankment, and some building developments. That's a lot of ground to be overlooked in the centre of an old medieval town!
According to the website of the garden itself, "about 8,000 species of ferns, herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees, are grown here. Some are native to Scotland but most grow wild in other regions of the world. All those outdoors are hardy and can be cultivated successfully in the climate around St Andrews. The soil is developed in glacial till overlying magnesian limestone. In the upper part of the garden the texture is a clay loam but near the Kinness Burn, it is sandy with some gravel."
The day was dreich, but it hardly mattered, because my word, what an impeccably kept space! Utterly chock full of colour and variety, and I suspect I took around one photo per each of the species represented, plus a good few extra of each of the irises - my favourite type of flower!
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