Scottish storyteller and folk musician Karine Polwart had been visiting Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden for 30 years before inspiration struck for a new theatre piece. It was December 2019 and Polwart was on day one of an artistic residency with her friend, sound designer Pippa Murphy.

‘We pushed into the beautiful old Victorian palmhouse, and you get that wave of sticky air, that artificially hot, tropical climate. We were shown this huge, lofty, sinewy plant, a sabal palm over 200 years old (the garden’s oldest living specimen), and told it was “for the axe”. That’s when the project sparked: I could tell straight away that this plant had a back story. Windblown is the story of that plant and why it had to come down. Half of the show is the palm tree telling its own story. And it’s the story of the gardeners who have looked after it, what it says about us.’

Polwart met a horticulturalist who had watered the plant on a daily basis and was struck by the level of emotional connection that he had to it. ‘Simon Allan spoke in the most amazing way about his job. He said that being in the glasshouse with the palm, it was like being in the room with an elephant, or on a boat when a whale comes up. He talked about the palm being “almost sentient”. He talked with such affection. Losing the palm came with this profound sadness; and nowhere to put that sadness.’

The sabal (Polwart points out that, botanically, it’s not a tree as palms are closer to grasses than trees) needed to be removed as it had outgrown its glasshouse, nearly breaking the 50-foot high roof. The Botanics are also undergoing a major redevelopment; the Edinburgh Biomes project will modernise the glasshouses and add new world-class conservation and research facilities.

‘Palms have evolved to withstand hurricane forces; that’s why the piece is called Windblown. They are strong and pliant with remarkably small, shallow roots for such tall plants. This gigantic palm that I met in Edinburgh, was not subject to any tropical storms. It’s been cossetted and protected in this glasshouse, and as a result has become very tall, but also very vulnerable and weak.’

Polwart and Murphy have co-composed Windblown, performed with pianist David Milligan, as part of an ongoing collaboration, which included the quietly powerful Wind Resistance about the bird migration patterns of pink-footed geese. Together they won Best Music and Best Sound at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS), and their companion album A Pocket Of Wind Resistance was shortlisted for Scottish Album Of The Year in 2018.

‘I’m interested in how folklore and the history of places and ecology all intertwine. Windblown and Wind Resistance are two examples of that. Covid really brought to the fore the importance of gardens and outdoor space, the solace in the natural environment in a time of multiple political bin fires. It sounds really leftfield and niche and spoddy to talk about a palm tree, but I think it speaks to much bigger issues. It also brings up issues of identity; what it is to not be allowed to be yourself. Constraint, freedom, ecological loss, the greater than human realm. The story of the palm has all of that in it.’

Karine Polwart: Windblown, Queen’s Hall, 9–13 August, 7.30pm.