There was more stone than ever to be seen at the Royal Horticultural Society’s centenary Chelsea Flower Show last month (21-25 May) when a record-breaking 92 exhibits, including, for the first time, 10 of the Show Gardens, won coveted RHS Gold Medals.

The garden by Fleming’s Nursery in Victoria, Australia, has been a popular exhibit for many years at Chelsea and this year’s Trailfinders Garden won the Australian nursery the accolade of being Best Show Garden.

It is pictured in the centre of these pages with its 190.8tonnes of Lewisian Gneiss. It also had 60tonnes of Scottish Beach Cobbles and Pebbles, 20-30tonnes of Scottish sandstone Walling, 40m2 of Cedagravel and 20m2 of Reclaimed Yorkstone flags.

Being Best Show Garden sent Fleming’s Nursery off on a high note – because this was the company’s swansong. It has said it will not be back at Chelsea next year.

Bob Sweet, RHS head of judging, said: “The exhibitors this year have demonstrated an unrivalled level of knowledge and ability. To be able to deliver gardens at the peak of perfection in a year when the growing conditions have been so challenging is extraordinary.

“The achievement of Flemings is fantastic. The attention to detail and evocative feel of Australia is a great tribute to the skill of the designers, growers and landscapers who have contributed to their garden.”

Best Artisan Garden title went to Japanese design company Ishihara Kazuyuki Design Laboratory, which also gained an RHS Gold Medal for the second time in a row, this time for its representation of an alcove within a traditional Japanese tatami room.

The People’s Choice for Show Garden went to the Arthritis Research UK Garden and for the small gardens to Le Jardin de Yorkshire.

All of them featured a lot of natural stone.

Burlington’s Cumbrian stones were back at Chelsea after a break of a few years and turned heads in designer Jamie Dunstan’s Silver Gilt Award-winning As Nature Intended garden along the Main Avenue.

With the inclusion of Broughton Moor paving in a waterjet finish, a spectacular piece of natural Broughton Moor stone and Burlington’s Westmorland Green cropped walling, visitors had the chance to see how the use of sustainable products and creative planting can so succinctly harmonise.

A lot of the stone that was in the gardens at Chelsea was there thanks to stone hard landscaping specialist CED, with its depots at various locations around the UK. It sourced and installed the stone for seven exhibits at Chelsea (including the Fleming’s Nursery Best Show Garden), six of which won Awards.

CED has supplied stone to the prestigious flower show for many years and as well as the Fleming’s Garden, this year it was also the source of the stone for Gold Medal winners of the Telegraph Garden designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole, The Brewin Dolphin Garden from Robert Myers and The Wasteland Garden by Kate Gould.

For the Telegraph Garden there was bespoke stonework to create a water and landscape feature. More than 50m2 of sawn buff yorkstone paving went to the Brewin Dolphin Garden. The Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden appeared simple and relaxed but the hard landscaping required sophisticated levels of engineering in the gabbro used. CED also supplied Golden Amber limestone, which is normally used as a footpath gravel although for this garden it was used in the creation of rammed earth walls.

Donegal quartzite crazy paving was delivered to The Wasteland Garden, just one of the ‘old’ materials given a new lease of life in a modern garden designed for communal use.

The Sound of Silence garden used silver grey granite aggregate edged with silver grey granite kerb.

BALI, one of the ‘Fresh’ gardens, included black limestone paving and thin slate tier panel walling.

Another stone specialist making a contribution to Chelsea was stoneCIRCLE in Basingstoke. The company was commissioned by StoneAge to manufacture an inlaid round stone feature in the middle of the Sentebale Garden.

The feature was composed of 125mm thick Pietra Serena limestone carved into shape on stoneCIRCLE’s Omag CNC workcentre and inlaid with Santa Fiore marble cut on a water jet to millimetre accuracy. The whole thing was then machined flat.

Sentebale is a charity founded by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, Africa, in memory of their mothers to help the neediest children of Lesotho. Prince Harry showed The Queen, his grandmother, round the garden when she visited the Show.

This is just some of the major contributions stone made to the success of the 100th Chelsea Flower Show this month. There was a lot more stone in the gardens and exhibits than there is room to include here. You can see some more of what was at the Show in a video on the Natural Stone Specialist website – www.naturalstonespecialist.com

If you are interested in the growing stuff, there is a lot more about it on the Royal Horticultural Society website – www.rhs.org.uk

Chelsea Flower Show is the pinnacle of horticultural excellence that each year sets the agenda for designers and gardeners across the globe. This year more than ever that agenda was set in natural stone.

Although, of course, it is not just (or even) stone that many of the thousands of visitors to Chelsea want to see and there is a lot more about the plants on the website of the Royal Horticultural Society.