There was, as ever, stone to be seen in the gardens created for the Royal Horticultural Society\'s Chelsea Flower Show this year. And one of the most spectacular displays was in a garden created by Jinny Blom and sponsored by the champagne company Laurent Perrier. With Champagne being French, Jinny wanted to create a French garden and felt Totternhoe clunch provided just the right setting.

The garden included 36m of Totternhoe clunch walls - that is about 30 tonnes of it that was sent up to Perth in Scotland to the workshop of artist David Wilson before going back down to Chelsea. H G Clarke & Son supplied the stone and received frantic calls from Chelsea for more stone as the garden was put together, says Sheridan Clark, the wife of Angus who runs the family firm. Jinny Blom wanted the extra stone for a crushed stone path and to put around the plants. When the garden was finished, Angus and Sheridan were invited to Chelsea to admire the garden and enjoy a glass or two of Laurent Perrier Champagne.

Another garden using stone incorporated the pebble art of Janette Ireland of Ellel, Lancaster. Janette received a certificate of merit for her garden in the sundries section of the show. The design is called Mapping Life and depicts both the contours of mapping and the strata of rock. The pattern continued into the alpine planting where there were five varieties of thyme providing lemon fragrance. Janette also exhibited wall mounted pebble art depicting daisies, landscape and the sunset.