Celebration of snowdrops at the Botanics

THE Royal Botanic Gardens is to play a key role in a winter festival taking place across the country.

The annual Scottish Snowdrop Festival sees gardens around Scotland open their gates to members of the public and allow them to walk around secluded paths.

The festival comes to the Inverleith attraction on March 15 and will involve indoor and outdoor activities for young and old.

Organisers VisitScotland have teamed up with Dark Skies Scotland to include some stargazing events in Edinburgh.

A spokesman for VisitScotland said: "Gardens taking part are helping expand the tourism season by attracting visitors to Scotland all year round, which is crucial if we are to achieve the ambition to grow tourism revenues by 50 per cent by 2015."