HISTORIC NOTICE. Vii 
University, Charles Alston, who as King’s Botanist had already 
the charge of the Royal Garden and was Regius Professor of 
Botany. Through him, after separation for a quarter of a 
century, the Royal Garden and the Town’s Garden were again 
combined under one Keeper, and the Regius Professorship of 
Botany and the University Professorship were similarly united. 
They have so continued to the present time. 
In 1763, the Royal Garden and the Town’s Garden proving 
too small and otherwise unsatisfactory, John Hope (1725-1786), 
who had succeeded Alston in his offices in 1761, proposed a 
transference of the two to a more congenial site in which they 
could be combined. At first it was intended to secure ground to 
the south of George Watson’s Hospital—the area upon which 
much of the present Royal Infirmary is built—but this not being 
possible, five acres of ground to the north side of Leith Walk, 
below the site now occupied by Haddington Place, were chosen. 
As Hope proposed to transfer the collections in the Royal 
Garden to the new Garden he was able to secure the support of 
the Treasury to his scheme, and the selected ground was leased 
in name of the Barons of Exchequer. At the same time the 
Town Council agreed to contribute £25 annually to the support 
of the Garden, this sum being the amount of rent expected from 
the letting of the old Town’s Garden. The plants from both 
Gardens were transferred to the ground at Leith Walk, and from 
this date there has been only one Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. 
The site thus secured for the Garden proved, however, only a 
temporary one. Daniel Rutherford (1749-1819), who in 1786 
succeeded Hope in his offices, cast about him for a spot in which 
more ground would be available for the extension of the Garden ; 
and eventually in 1815 nine and a half acres of the land lying 
to the east of Holyrood Palace, and forming the ground of 
Belleville or Clockmill, was fixed upon as a site in every way 
desirable; but Rutherford dying before completion of the 
arrangements for the transference of the Garden, his successor, 
Robert Graham (1786-1845), appointed in 1820, preferred the 
more open site of the Inverleith property which the Garden now 
occupies, and fourteen acres of the Field or Park of Inverleith, 
known as Broompark and Quacaplesink, were purchased by the 
Barons of Exchequer from Mr James Rocheid, its owner, in 1820, 
