Princes Street Gardens sits below the infamous and breathtaking Edinburgh Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The parks are divided in to the East and West Princes Street Gardens.

West Princes Street Gardens is a 29 acres site and was the subject of an international competition in 2017 to reimagine The Ross Pavilion.

The competition was won by New York based wHY Architects with a dynamic collaborative team.

The team included leading designers such as GRAS, Groves-Raines Architects, Arup, Studio Yann Kersalé, Noel Kingsbury, Atelier Ten amongst others.

Dr. Noel Kingsbury is the Horticultural Lead for The Ross Pavilion.
Flavia Goldsworthy was invited to work with Noel to deliver this exciting project.

Dr. Noel Kingsbury is internationally known as an innovator, writer and teacher in the fields of horticulture and planting design. He has published around 25 books including four with Piet Oudolf.

He is a globally-recognised authority on the long-term performance of ornamental herbaceous vegetation and is a leading voice on Naturalistic Planting Design.

The West Princes Street gardens are rather tired and not particularly ecologically diverse. The gardens haven’t evolved much over the last few years as is evident by the expanse of bare soil, the use bedding plants and shrub roses.

Rectifying the lack of biodiversity is a key component of the proposed planting design.
Flavia and Noel champion the implementation of ecologically biodiverse plantings and have researched carefully suitable species for the site.

A mix of native and non-native plants will be included in the palette, as well as some species discovered by the infamous Scottish plant hunter David Douglas.