The Stone in the Wall - Glasgow's Other Botanic Gardens

Glasgow. Dear Green Place, with a Botanic Gardens and everything. But Glasgow once had another Botanic Gardens, not the one that currently sits between Great Western Road and the deep gorge by the River Kelvin. It's a garden that few people know about, and it was royal, a Royal Botanic Garden. It existed between 1817 and 1841. But no one knows it was there, just there, bordered by Sauchiehall Street, Kelvingrove Street, Argyle Street and Claremont Street. A garden full of all the things you might expect in such a leafy space, full of plants and shrubs and trees and greenhouses and cactusessies - is that a word? - and all that sort of thing. But it's gone. And no one knows anything about it. But if you sit on the top deck of a number 77 bus that stops by Fitzroy Lane in Clarement Street, you may just see a stone in the gable end of a tenement, and that stone reads, 'GLASGOW BOTANIC GARDEN, INSTITUTED 1817.' Have you seen the stone? Because all you have to do is look. #glasgowhistory #glasgow