Watch: Behind the scenes at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh during lockdown

Small dedicated teams have been working around the clock to look after their priceless specimens.

The Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News have been given a behind-the-scenes view of how the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is dealing with the coronavirus lockdown as it prepares to welcome back visitors.

David Knott, Curator of the Living Collection at the Gardens, said: “Like so many horticulturalists across the world, when the impacts of Covid-19 spread across the world, we began to make plans as to how we would ensure the living collection would continue to be maintained.

“We closed to the public on the 17th of March, and the week immediately after that - pre-lockdown - we began to think quite carefully and plan quite carefully about what measures we would put in place.”

A world-leading centre of plant research and conservation, RBGE has marshalled dedicated teams of specialists to ensure the safety of their priceless specimens during the outbreak.

“We have some of the finest collections of rock garden alpine plants anywhere in the world,” said Daivd, “and the RBGE has had a long history, since the mid-1800s, of cultivating alpine plants.”

Watch the video to learn more about the work staff at RBGE are doing to prepare the Gardens to reopen.

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