Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon made the long-awaited announcement that we could start to ease some parts of the lockdown in Scotland.
One of the new changes is that garden centres are allowed to re-open, good news especially since there has been surge of interest in gardening since lockdown started.
On the outskirts of Edinburgh sits Dobbies, the gigantic mothership of a UK-wide garden centre empire. While centres in England have been open for a while, the Edinburgh HQ store had been forced to stay closed, until today.
With stories of garden centres forced to throw away thousands of plants during what should be their busiest time of year it was with some trepidation that Edinburgh Live went to go and see what it was like at Dobbies, now it is open again.
Pulling into the car park of the Edinburgh institution the is Dobbies garden centre in Lasswade things seemed pretty quiet.
We arrived at about 3pm in the scorching sun to find a car park around half full and the queue about 25 people deep, mostly elderly people and young families.
The standard system of markers 2m apart for people to queue safely had been put in place - something we're all familiar with from supermarkets.
Friendly staff in PPE told customers when to enter, in order to keep the number of customers inside at no more than 60.
One member of staff was disinfecting the trolley handles outside the front and cheerily waiving customers through.
Although the queue wasn't too bad when we were there, only about 15 minutes, one worker told me this morning had been hectic.
She said: "We opened at nine and they'd been queuing since eight. The line stretched right around the car park."
On entering the store I was interested to see the state of the plants, surely sitting in the garden centre rather than being looked after in people's homes wouldn't have done them any favours.
The first section you come to once inside is houseplants, the first thing I noticed was the size. Enormous peace lilies and gigantic dracaenas made it feel like I'd wondered onto the set of The Lost World.
One member of staff told me: "They've been taken care of while we were shut, and it's so warm in here, they've just kept growing".
Not everything had flourished though, outside there were some plants which had clearly suffered during the closure, despite best efforts of the owners to keep their stock alive.
But aside from one or two wilted flowers and some sad-looking rhododendrons almost all the plants were full of life. To look at it the store could have been closed for just a few days.
A long one-way queue system has been put in place, there was a moment of panic when this reporter got lost in a law-furniture section and realised he had strayed into it by mistake, but no harm done.
The checkouts have plastic screens and we were asked to stand back while a worker scanned the items in our trolley for us with a hand held barcode reader.
To receive one WhatsApp message a day with Edinburgh Live's headlines, as well as breaking news alerts, text NEWS to 07899067815. Then add the number to your contacts as 'Edinburgh Live'.
All things considered, the staff have done an admirable job keeping the place going without customers and the 60 person limit gives a nice calm atmosphere inside, although you have to actively avoid people here and there.
I imagine it may well be much busier on weekends and queuing for more than 20 minutes in the hot sun might not be much fun, but once inside, check out those peace lilies.
