IN the middle of a magical land belonging to two little girls, a wide-eyed scientist leans into the flowers and bushes to discover a strange creature that blows bubbles through its backside, a flying insect that eats garden sheds and spiders so large and terrifying that they must have come from another planet . .
But this land isn't far, far away – it is in fact a suburban city garden in Trinity. And technically speaking, it doesn't belong to six-year-old Scarlett Donald and her sister Ines, four, but their parents, Tim and Fiona.
The strange creatures are
real enough, though, as is the wide-eyed scientist, aka Dr Graham Rotheray, principal curator of insects at The National Musuem of Scotland and head of its new Garden Detectives exhibition.
He's left the museum behind and ventured outdoors to prove that every back garden or yard, even the smallest city patch – or nearby park for flat-dwellers – can provide a fascinating microcosmic safari.
Which is, of course, what Garden Detectives, part of Darwin200, a national programme of events marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and celebrating his scientific ideas, is all about.
The hands-on exhibition will encourage young visitors to use their eyes, ears and sense of smell to follow clues and find out about the insects, animals and plants that live in different areas of the garden, from sheds and ponds to flower beds and hedgerows.
"Every summer we get people coming into the museum with a spider in a jar that they're convinced is so large and unusual that it must have come to Britain from somewhere else," says Dr Rotheray.
"They tend to be the big ones with the cantilevered legs that can freak a lot of people out, but they're just ordinary house spiders and they're nothing to be afraid of."
At this point, Scarlett runs up to Dr Rotheray with a handful of woodlice that she found, holding them close to her face and marvelling as they wriggle and scurry in her hands. "Young children are usually fearless when it comes to insects," he nods, as he inspects Scarlett's find.
"It tends to be the older children that cringe when they see a creepy crawly and it's usually fears that have been passed down by adults that the children pick up as they get older."
Dr Rotheray takes Scarlett and Ines on a tour through their garden pointing to infinitesimal details that would be invisible to the untrained eye, but unravel a world of detail about the fauna that live in a typical Edinburgh garden.
"There!" he says, pointing at what looks like a white blob of spit on a plant stem, and the children lean forward in intrigue. "That's what is commonly called 'cuckoo-spit' – but it's got nothing to do with cuckoos.
"It's actually produced by an insect called a froghopper, which sucks the water from the plant stem and releases its waste through a special valve at the rear of its body that foams it up into bubbles.
"It uses these bubbles to hide from predators and if you wipe away the spit," he adds, taking a thumb to the white foamy mass to reveal a pale green creature inside, "you'll see the froghopper is still in there.
"Look how it scurries away to the bottom of the plant now that it's been discovered. That's an instinctive reaction as it knows the bottom of the plant will be the most protected."
The doctor's eyes turn to the leaf of the plant as the froghopper disappears from view to notice a series of streaks discolouring the surface of the leaf.
"That's what's sometimes known as 'hopper-burn' and it's produced by an insect called a leafhopper. The leafhopper sucks the sap from the leaf and drains the colour as it goes."
By this point, Scarlett and Ines's dad Tim, a 42-year-old promotions manager, is also enthralled by the garden safari.
"It's like sucking the colour from an ice-pole," says Tim.
Dr Rotheray points out that the edges of some of the leaves have been chewed away in a semi-circular pattern, leading the family to suspect a caterpillar.
"No, it's not a caterpillar," says the doctor. "The leaves have been munched by a leaf-cutter bee.
"Somewhere on the lawn you'll find a hole that she's dug to keep her larvae in, and once she had finished she would have come over to the leaf and ripped out parts of it to stuff down the hole for protection. If you go over to the garden shed you'll see the wasps have been doing something similar to the wood."
He points out another set of apparently imperceptible streaks. "They chew through the wood with their very tough mandibles and use it as protection for their larvae."
Dr Rotheray has set up a specially-created garden inside his exhibition at The National Museum of Scotland to show visitors how to search for clues to the natural world in their own gardens. The garden was inspired by the simple observation methods used by Darwin, which he would later use to craft his scientific masterpiece On The Origin of Species in which he postulated the theory of evolution. Tales of Darwin's trips to the Galapagos Islands to document the strange animals and wide variations of species are legend, but much of the legwork for his book was done in his own back garden at Down House, his home in Bromley which is now owned by English Heritage.
The NMS exhibition Garden Detectives will highlight the hidden world of plants, insects and animals through a mix of real specimens, interactive exhibits and displays.
Activities include a garden shed housing its own wormery and insect collection and a magnetic fishing rod that allows young sleuths to delve into a garden pond and hook the creatures that live at different depths.
Other activities enable children to track down the animals by following their footprints, transform themselves into insects and peep inside hedges to discover the creatures within.
Dr Rotheray says: "Our Garden Detectives exhibition uses this familiar habitat to show visitors how to see and investigate some of the rich diversity of garden wildlife. We hope they will gain a new level of understanding of nature and be inspired, like Darwin, to explore the natural world themselves."
Garden Detectives is free and runs until Sunday 27 September at the National Museum of Scotland in Chambers Street. Garden Detectives is sponsored by Scottish Natural Heritage.
