DON’T tell the staff that it’s your favourite Glasgow park. Well, the favourite bit, they won’t object to - it’s the park description that they may not like. It’s called the Botanic Gardens for a reason.

For most of us the Botanic Gardens at the top of Byres Road is a sward of peacefulness away from the boisterousness of pubs, shops and cafes that assault the senses in the west end. You can rest for a minute or two on the varnished wooden benches, perhaps pausing to think of the person that the bench is dedicated to while you watch students throw a Frisbee at each other. There are the classic “No Ball Games” signs on the more manicured grass which is why Frisbees are more in evidence.

I’ve even watched someone throw a boomerang in the park, and even more annoyingly it returned to him which never happens when the rest of us try it.

But the park doesn’t exist simply for our amusement. Celebrating its 200th anniversary, the Botanic Gardens was set up to conserve and research plants from around the world. It still swaps plants with botanic gardens abroad, and university students and researchers continue to investigate the properties of the plants grown in the greenhouses at the back of the gardens. Drugs to tackle cancers and Aids have been created from the research carried out on the plants at the Botanic Gardens.

Locals usually have a story to tell about the Botanic Gardens when they are taking visitors for a stroll through it. The Kibble Palace for example, that great glasshouse to the right of the main entrance, wasn’t built for the gardens, but was actually eccentric John Kibble’s “glass palace” as he called it at his home at Coulport on the shores of Loch Long.

He sold it to the Botanic Gardens and it was shipped up by barge via the Clyde and the Forth and Clyde Canal to Maryhill where it was carted and reassembled in the gardens.

Many a schoolboy has found the nude statues in the Kibble of interest. The first as you go in is Scipione Tadolini’s Eve who is holding her hand to her mouth, perhaps in alarm at seeing a snake. A bit like the Duke of Wellington with his cone on his head, Eve’s hand occasionally has a cigarette in it, anonymously donated, as if she is taking a sly drag.

Another woman further round, charmingly sculpted by Antonio Rosetti is described as a “Nubian slave” although she looks far more European than Nubian. I don’t suppose many folk knew the difference back then.

For the more bloodthirsty there are the carnivorous plants and many a time I would stand there in my youth hoping for a fly to be snapped by the Venus fly-trap. Never did see it.

There are carp endlessly swimming in the palace, and folk claim that families fed up cleaning their children’s fish tanks, set goldfish free there when their children tired of them.

And another favourite story about the Kibble is that the Suffragettes tried to blow it up. In January 1914 night watchman David Waters doing his rounds heard a spluttering sound and found a bomb with sparks flying from its lengthy fuse.

He tried to stamp it out, failed, then cut it with a knife before hurrying away to drop the device in a tub of water. Sounds all very cartoonish but there was a second bomb which did explode as David hurried away, shattering 27 panes of glass in the Kibble.

The Herald, like other newspapers of the day, reported that an empty champagne bottle, remains of a cake, and a lady’s black silk veil were found at the scene, suggesting that Suffragettes had a party while they planted the bomb.

It seems that The Herald and the other newspapers were guilty even then of sensationalism. I checked the editions of the paper a few days later where it quietly reported in a corner: “It is now believed that the empty champagne bottle was not left by the perpetrators but had been thrown over the wall by a passer-by.” “Fake news!” as a US President would now bellow, although I do like the idea that over a hundred years ago folk were throwing champagne bottles over walls. It seems the west end doesn’t change all that much after all.

And apart from our favourite stories about the Botanic Gardens, west enders also have their favourite spots. For me it is not the main paths with their rows of benches but the paths less travelled that take you down to the River Kelvin. Out of sight from the main gates, the Botanic Gardens carry on down the hill to the river and even across it. It’s almost as if west enders don’t even like to cross the Kelvin as it takes you nearer to Maryhill. But in the summer when the main pathways are teaming with strollers, the Kelvin paths are quiet enough for those seeking a rest from the west end cacophony.

Saturday’s 200th anniversary celebrations included visits to the glasshouses not normally open to the public. There is a fern house with examples brought from New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, constantly kept in a moist atmosphere as they would in their native countries.

All this of course costs money. The original Botanic Gardens opened in 1817 were further up towards Charing Cross, founded by botanist Thomas Hopkirk. It was a private concern and folk paid a penny to stroll within it at weekends, with the middle classes buying a yearly family pass.

The gardens then moved to the present site in 1842 to avoid the city spreading westwards, and it was the purchase of the Kibble Palace which put them into financial difficulties. The company went bust a few years later and basically Glasgow Corporation took over, promising to keep the gardens open in perpetuity.

Thank goodness for that. I’m still hoping to see that fly-trap snap into action one day.