Historic Notice. 
IN the year 1670 a small portion of ground, known as St. 
Ann’s Yards, lying to the south of Holyrood House, and 
usually let to market gardeners by the Hereditary Keeper 
of 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 Garden was stocked with plants 
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. Shortly thereafter, but at what precise 
date has not yet been ascertained, Sutherland became custodian 
: of the Royal Garden, which lay on the north side of the Palace, 
and it became a Physic Garden for instruction, whilst the 
original plot in St. Ann’s Yards was, apparently, given up. 
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. : 
