Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum's new gardens are now open after a five-year redevelopment plan that transforms the five-acre garden into an urban haven for people and wildlife. This provides a new green oasis in the city, enhancing biodiversity and offering a beautiful space for visitors to connect with nature as well as a world-class outdoor living laboratory for ecologists and environmentalists to help them understand better the diverse and hugely important role that Urban Nature has to play in our cities.

On the east side of the gardens, the Evolution Garden takes visitors on a geological journey from the Precambrian Period including 2.7 billion-year old rock, through the Cambrian period, all the way to the present with each metre of pathway from the start of the Cambrian period marking five million years of history.

Within the Evolution Timeline, each geological period is represented by one or more rocks incorporated into the garden landscape, with all but two sources from across the UK. Using rocks formed during particular moments in Earth’s history, as well as plants, sculptures and brass inlays, the Evolution Garden tells the story of life on Earth, and CED Stone is very proud to have worked with the Natural History Museum project team to source and supply almost all the stone for the newly transformed gardens.

We visited many quarries across the country sourcing stone for the project, and thanks to our joint efforts, there are more than 26 different rock types in the garden spanning Earth's geological periods, including a Cambrian Period slate from North Wales, Cornish Granite formed during the Early Permian Period, a Red Sandstone from Scotland formed in the Permian Period when there were deserts in Scotland, and Chalk from Northern Ireland represents the Cretaceous Period. Some of the rocks were also sourced through more unusual routes, including a farmer donating the Hertfordshire puddingstone he found on his land.

The youngest stone in the gardens is Scoria. Formed in a volcanic eruption in Iceland this stone marks the Permian-Triassic extinction, a series of extinction pulses that contributed to the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history.

Throughout the garden, there are rocks which can be used as seating so that visitors can rest and immerse themselves in the gardens and each rock seat will be in the period it was formed.