Next level nature: summer days out with a difference
Four leading Scottish venues join forces for a summer celebration of art, gardens, and the natural world.
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Get ready to experience nature in a different way this summer.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland, Jupiter Artland and V&A Dundee are celebrating the great outdoors with an exciting series of events and exhibitions.
From the feminist, botanical themes in Linder’s art, to future-forward garden design at V&A Dundee, each venue offers an innovative perspective on how we see, shape, and are shaped by nature.
Whether you're an art lover, garden enthusiast, or curious explorer, you’re invited to join us for a summer full of art. Enjoy days out with a difference across Edinburgh and Dundee and discover how our outside environment has inspired artists – and could inspire you.
We can’t wait to see you.
Four destinations. One unforgettable summer.
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
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Danger Came Smiling is the first Scottish retrospective of pioneering feminist artist Linder. Showcasing 50 years of trailblazing artwork, it dives into her fascination with plants and invites us to see beyond traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. Deliciously satirical, her photomontages remix images from popular culture, ranging from early pin-up photography to house plants. This adapted version of Linder: Danger Came Smiling – a Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition from Southbank Centre, London – spills out into the Garden.
Linder: Danger Came Smiling is at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Open now until Sunday 19 October. Free admission.
Botanics Late
Join us for an evening of after-hours music, art and food in the Garden. Dance among the trees to live music, relax with street food or a drink from our bars, and gain special access to Linder: Danger Came Smiling – all overlooking views of the Edinburgh skyline.
Botanics Late is at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Friday 15 August. Tickets £16, members £14, Carer’s ticket free.
National Galleries of Scotland
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This summer, the largest ever indoor exhibition by Andy Goldsworthy will take place at the National Galleries of Scotland. Featuring over 200 works, the show will include major installations made in response to the iconic Royal Scottish Academy building, as well as drawings, photographs, films, sketchbooks and archival items dating back to the mid-1970s and spanning fifty years.
Throughout his career, Andy Goldsworthy has created a unique and highly influential body of work that speaks of our relationship with the land. In Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years the land is brought indoors, into Scotland’s capital city. Sure to be one of the most talked-about art events of the year and only to be seen in Edinburgh.
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 26 July-2 November. Open daily, 10am–5pm. Tickets £5–£19. Friends go free.
V&A Dundee
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Garden Futures: Designing with Nature
Unearth the extraordinary and everyday world of garden design with the new major exhibition from V&A Dundee, Garden Futures: Designing with Nature. This sensory show digs deep into garden design through surprising and sometimes unexpected stories.
From windowsill plants to allotments, from the therapeutic gardens at Maggie’s Dundee to The High Line in New York, gardens mean something different to everyone.
The exhibition shows how gardens provide an infinite source of creative inspiration, from William Morris to Dior to contemporary videogames, as well as inspiring us to have a go and create our own labour of love.
Garden Futures: Designing with Nature is at Gallery 1, V&A Dundee, open now until 25 January 2026. £7.50–£16, book in advance for £1 discount. Members and kids go free.
Jupiter Artland
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WORK BEGAT WORK: Ian Hamilton Finlay & Andy Goldsworthy | WYRD: Jonathan Baldock | Warm Inside: Jonathan Baldock
WORK BEGAT WORK is a celebration of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Andy Goldsworthy. Clay Tree Wall by Andy Goldsworthy will be revealed for the first time in twelve years in Jupiter’s Upper Steadings Gallery, alongside beautiful and poetic works usually not on public display from Ian Hamilton Finlay. It coincides with Ian Hamilton Finlay’s centenary and the celebration of Andy Goldsworthy at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.
WYRD: is a brand-new commission by Jonathan Baldock. Jupiter’s stunning Ballroom Gallery will be transformed into a zoo of hybrid animals formed from textile and clay. Based on species that have been identified as having same-sex sexual behaviour, penguin, giraffe, crab and elephant mutate into fantastical hybrids of folkloric and mythological creatures.
Warm Inside: is an evocative installation of twelve hanging sculptures commissioned by Accelerator, Stockholm, in 2021. This group of life-sized cocoons house and protect bodies on the brink of metamorphosis. Hand-spun wool, plant-dyed fibres and intricately woven baskets comprise the works, with ceramic hands, feet and masks within. Some of the works hold dried lavender, a plant used as a sedative, preservative and protection against infection and in burial rites for hundreds of years. The sculptures evoke both the womb and tomb as structures that surround, protect and embalm, marking both a beginning and an end.
WORK BEGAT WORK, open now | WYRD is open until 28 September | Warm Inside is open until 27 July. All at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh.
Tickets £11.80, concession £10.80, child (4-16) £7.50, child (under 3) free.