Sir Robert Sibbald, botanist, physician and geographer was born on 15th April 1641 in Blackfriars Wynd off Edinburgh's High Street. Sibbald established a botanical garden at Holyrood House in Edinburgh from 1667. Both there, and in the second site in the Trinity Hospital, the garden became a major site for plants of use in materia medica. It was run by James Sutherland, later the first professor of botany at Edinburgh University and author (with Sibbald's assistance) of the unpublished ‘Hortus medicus Edinburgensis'. Sibbald died on 9th August 1722.