CED Stone Inspiring Beautiful Landscapes

CED Stone Group Sponsor ‘Evolve: Through The Roots Of Time’ Feature Exhibit at RHS Hampton Court


Post date: 29 Jun, 2018

Back in May this year, we were approached by Gemma Lake, RHS Hampton Court Palace’s Show Manager. Gemma asked us if we would be interested in working collaboratively with the RHS to create ‘Evolve: Through the Roots of Time’; a large educational feature garden planned for the show. After supporting and sponsoring numerous show gardens and tradestands at RHS flower shows over the years, we were very excited to contribute our expertise and materials to this show-stopping build!

Twitter Gemma Lake

Taking RHS Hampton Court visitors back through time in a large biome, the walk-through exhibit shows the evolution of plants; exploring where they came from and how they adapted to live in the world we know today. If you want to know which plants were eaten by dinosaurs then the ‘Evolve: Through the Roots of Time’ garden is the one for you. It’s certainly a large-scape build, and the garden has been generating a lot of interest in the press over the last few months, making it a real talking point of the build-up of the show.

RHS Hampton Evolve CED Stone Group Images from DJR Landscapes 6

Housed inside a dome structure and spilling out into the show-ground, this theatrical and educational feature allows visitors to learn what the landscape and general environment might have been like at various points in the earth’s history. Designed by Dave Green, (the man behind the RHS Butterfly Dome) the design features different time periods, including the Pre-Cambrian, Devonian and Jurassic. The walk finishes in the present day with a meadow of flowering plants. The team have created a number of different paved areas, with different styled paths matching the feel of each era.

RHS Evolve: Through The Roots of Time

Giles Heap, CED Stone Group’s Managing Director, met with Dave and the RHS Show Managers in order to discuss the design, assess quantities and look over different material samples.

‘We worked closely with the team to make sure that the right materials would be used in the right way, in the right parts of the garden.’ said Giles. ‘This was particularly important for this project, as we had to be accurate with the different geological time periods.’

RHS Hampton Evolve CED Stone Group Images from DJR Landscapes 12

This isn’t the first time that CED Stone Group have been asked to help when it comes to projects featuring geological timelines. Back in 2010, CED’s founder and chairman Michael Heap began to bring the UK stone industry together to create The Geological Walk, a very special paving display at the British Geological Society’s Headquarters in Nottingham. The scheme includes every type of British paving stone from the Precambrian to the Quaternary periods. You can find out more about this project here.

Nottingham, Geological Walk

The Geological Walk at the British Geological Society’s Headquarters…

Built by DJR Landscaping, The ‘Evolve: Through The Roots Of Time’ garden features nine different stone materials from CED Stone Group in total:

RHS Evolve: Through The Roots of Time

The garden also uses our CEDApath Gravel Stabilisation System. Specially designed by CED, our systems are ideal for keeping outdoor paths and driveways looking smart and neat.

RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2018 runs from 2nd - 8th July and tickets are available from here. If you are planning on designing a garden for a flower show or event and would like to discuss the possibility of using hard landscaping products from CED Stone Landscape, then please do contact us and we will do our best to support your project.

Photos courtesy of Dean Richards from DJR Landscapes.