Green Flag for Heriot-Watt University

Heriot-Watt University is today celebrating a prestigious award for its green campus. It has become the first Scottish university to receive a Green Flag Award.

Landscape Architects Weddle Landscape Design have been advising the university on landscape management since 1968, and helped make the successful Green Flag Award submission. This award recognises the efforts of the Landscape Team and the Site Conservation Committee.

The Green Flag is the national standard for parks and gardens, and rewards those which meet the highest standards.  The judges were satisfied that Heriot Watt University Estates were carrying out the best possible management of public access landscape.

Heriot-Watt focussed its Green Flag award on the Formal Gardens, a historic garden dating back to 1755 which now lies at the heart of the Edinburgh campus at Riccarton.  The university has been maintaining the gardens since taking ownership of the historic country estate in 1968.  Although overgrown and neglected, the historic garden layout was recognised as having great conservation value.   Historic Scotland consider it to be a fine example of a nineteenth century formal garden.

In 1969 the university set up a Site Conservation Committee to safeguard all the green spaces on the campus; and now after over 40 years their far sighted vision has been rewarded.

The university is planning a flag unfurling ceremony to celebrate this important environmental achievement.