The Floral Clock & the Poet in a Nightcap
Why is it significant?
Crouch down by the sloping flowerbed just inside the gate and watch: the hands of this clock are moving, and they are planted. Thousands of tiny plants in carefully chosen colours form the dial, the numbers and a design that changes every year.
Key Facts
| Place | The Floral Clock & the Poet in a Nightcap |
|---|---|
| Address | West Princes Street Gardens, Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95170, -3.19720 |
| Part of Walk | Painted, Carved and Planted: Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens and the Mound |
| Generated | Generated |
Crouch down by the sloping flowerbed just inside the gate and watch: the hands of this clock are moving, and they are planted. Thousands of tiny plants in carefully chosen colours form the dial, the numbers and a design that changes every year. Above it, on a tall pedestal, Allan Ramsay himself looks down in a soft cap instead of a wig.
The Floral Clock was created in 1903 by the city's parks superintendent, John McHattie, and it is said to be the first floral clock in the world. The original clockwork was hidden in the pedestal of the Ramsay statue and turned the hands through a shaft, and it had to be wound by hand. A cuckoo was added in 1952, and it still pops out of its little house to mark the quarter hours.
Planting it is a summer art form. Each year the gardeners use tens of thousands of plants to make a pattern celebrating an anniversary, an institution or a cause, and even the hands are planted, carrying living greenery round and round the dial. Since 1973 the clock has been driven by electricity, so nobody has to wind it any more.
The man on the pedestal deserves a moment. Allan Ramsay opened one of the first circulating libraries in Britain, lending books from his shop in the 1720s, to the horror of ministers who feared that novels and plays would corrupt the young. In 1736 he even opened a theatre, and the authorities soon shut it down. His statue was carved by John Steell, the same sculptor who made the marble Walter Scott.
From here, the whole of West Princes Street Gardens opens out below the Castle rock. Walk west along the upper path, past the bronze horseman of the Royal Scots Greys, to a long bronze frieze of marching men with a young soldier seated in front of them.