Historic Notice. 
IN the year 1670 a portion of the Royal Garden around 
Holyrood House was occupied by two eminent Edinburgh 
physicians, Andrew Balfour and Robert Sibbald, for the making 
of a Physic Garden, and James Sutherland was appointed to 
the “Care of the Garden.” This was the foundation of the 
Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, which is therefore, after 
that of Oxford (founded in 1632), the oldest in Great Britain. 
The stocking of the Garden with plants was effected from the 
private Garden of Dr Andrew Balfour, in which for some years 
he had been accumulating medicinal plants, and also in great 
measure from that at Livingston in West Lothian, the laird of 
which, Patrick Murray, was much interested in the growing of 
useful plants. 
In 1676 the same physicians acquired from the Town Council 
of Edinburgh a lease of the Garden of Trinity Hospital and 
adjacent ground for the purpose of a Physic Garden in addition 
to the Garden already existing at Holyrood, and they appointed 
the same James Sutherland (16..-1715) to be “ Intendant ” of 
this Garden. The site of this Garden, which for convenience of 
reference may be called the Town’s Botanic Garden, was the 
ground lying between the base of that portion of the Calton Hill 
upon which the prison is built and the North Bridge, and it is 
now occupied by a portion of the Waverley Station of the North 
British Railway. The name Physic Garden attached to a street 
in the vicinity is a reminiscence of the existence of the Garden at 
this spot. 
About 1702 another Botanic Garden was established in 
Edinburgh in the ground immediately adjacent to the College 
Buildings, apparently on the site of the present South College 
Street. This was the College Garden, and of it James Sutherland 
became also custodian. 
