6 December 2006

Opening of Botanic Garden Education Centre

Photo opportunity - 11 am, Thursday December 7th.
University of Dundee Botanic Garden

The official opening of a new £40,000 education centre at the University of Dundee Botanic Garden will be marked by a visit from local schoolchildren to see the garden’s Rainforest Trail - which in climate terms is at the opposite end of the scale from the centre’s origins.

The new education centre is a log cabin which only arrived in Dundee after a long and arduous journey, as Alasdair Hood, Curator of the Botanic Garden, explained:

"The building was sourced for us through the company Cabinco, who found it in Estonia. However, it took longer than expected before we could get things moving as it was stuck in ice while being transported in the Baltic."

"Then the cabin, which was effectively a giant flat pack, got left on the dockside in Helsinki. It has been an adventure just getting it here, so it was a relief when it arrived to find that it perfectly matched the foundations we had already constructed!"

A class from Blackness Primary School in Dundee will visit the new centre on Thursday, where they will receive their introduction to the Rainforest Trail.

The building fits sensitively within the surroundings of the Botanic Garden. It was part funded by the Mathew Trust and The Friends of the Garden, with the remainder coming from Garden funds.

The Botanic Garden has also had another impressive new building installed, a gazebo built from Scottish oak which is to be known as the Eddie Kemp Pavilion after the first Curator of the Botanic Garden. Eddie is in his nineties and still takes an active interest in the work of the garden.

For media enquiries contact:

Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk