St Andrews Botanic Garden

Picture of Peace Garden St Andrews Botanic Garden

Orchard at St Andrews Botanic Gardens

I visited the small orchard at the St Andrews Botanic Garden whist on a trip to Scotland.

Lichen

Hives at St Andrews Botanic Gardens

The Gardens are nice and if you are in or near St Andrews its worth a visit. The garden has a small orchard with various fruit trees, but this time of the year they are still relatively dormant. They have small trees not sure what root stock but I can see they have little space left to add more. I did see trees that looked like they were going to plant elsewhere and they have an area in which they grow rootstock for future trees before grafting. The air in St Andrews is very clean and lichen is growing on many of the trees, I saw at least 4 different varieties. Lichen on trees is a very good indicator of air quality.

Picture of the orchard

Picture of the orchard

The gardens also have a number of bee hives. The hives are not really for public viewing, they aren't visible to the public, you need to know where they are, as they are in the staff only area. I spoke to one of the gardeners and he said I could go and visit the hives. He pointed me in the right direction and I was off. They have a good number of hives. I wanted to see Smiths Hives but I didn't see any Smith Hives. Smiths Hives have traditionally been popular in Scotland, they hold around 50,000 bees, they are smaller than British National Hives and much smaller than Langstroth's.