The Regent, Royal and Carlton Terrace Gardens form a roughly triangular plot bordered on its two long sides by the individual domestic gardens of Regent Terrace and Royal Terrace. They include an additional thin strip of land on the opposite side, between Regent and Carlton Terraces and Regent Road. The gardens were created between 1830 and 1832; the feu having been granted after an agreement that the ground be used for pleasure gardens. The gardens were laid out with the help of the naturalist and gardener Patrick Neill and botanist Robert Graham, the Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden. The layout of the gardens has remained largely unchanged since its inception. The layout is broadly divided into a large 2.8-hectare area with six distinct lawns and a smaller 2-hectare area of woodland. The lawns are surrounded with several different species of trees, including an avenue of lime trees, and a series of horse chestnuts along a ha-ha near the Calton Hill boundary wall at the top of the grounds. Various paths covered by trees surround the large lawn area. The woodland area is planted with snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and bluebells. Two tennis courts were laid in the north west part of the gardens between 1882 and 1883; these were replaced by a more permanent court in 1889. In 2012, this court area was enlarged and the red brick dust surface was replaced with green asphalt.
Species
Some of the older trees date back to the early 19th century. A chestnut tree planted in 1826 lasted until 2011, when it was felled due to disease. The following tree species were recorded in the gardens at the end of the 20th century: ash, beech, black poplar, cherry, common lime, English elm, hawthorn, holly, horse chestnut, laburnum, Norway maple, oak, rowan, silver birch, small leafed lime, sweet chestnut, sycamore, tulip tree, whitebeam, white poplar, and wych elm.
Management
The management of the gardens is governed by a Local Act of Parliament, the Regent, Royal and Carlton Terrace Gardens, Edinburgh Order Confirmation Act 1970, which received Royal Assent in May 1970, based on the original Contract of Feu of 1836. The gardens are looked after by the Regent Royal and Carlton Terrace Gardens Association. The journalist and editor Arnold Kemp wrote of his experiences serving on the association committee in the 1970s in a 1993 article for The Herald. The gardens are publicly accessible each year through the Doors Open Days scheme.
