New Charcoal Slate Feature Stones at Malvern 2024

When South Korean designers, Lu Wenjuan and Yun Sunmi, approached Stone Warehouse for help to create their Green Islands Garden at RHS Malvern in 2024, we jumped at the opportunity.

Lu & Yun’s vision was to craft a design that was fully recyclable and to reduce waste from their garden. The aim was to produce Islands that together formed a powerful representation of the interconnectedness between nature and humanity, that included hard hitting messages regarding ocean pollution and global warming. The real ice island was one of the publics talking points on the opening day, on the hottest day of the year, just how long was that iceberg going to last?

The challenge set for Stone Warehouse was to find large Charcoal Slate Feature Stones to form the islands that were to be the bedrock of their vision and to meet the brief of recycling the materials, we had to look at this from a slightly different angle.

The largest sized Slate Rockery available from Stone Warehouse are the 250mm pieces in crates of 80 pieces, that form small rockeries and water features for most of our customers.

The large single Slate Feature Stones required by Lu and Yun were one off pieces, and this style of large single pieces are becoming more and more popular in gardens across the country. So, we agreed to source these huge pieces and organise their return to us after the show which met the designers brief and also allowed us to launch them as a new product after the RHS Malvern Exhibition.

Therefore, you can buy one of the exact pieces from Lu and Yun’s show garden to become the centrepiece of your very own Green Island garden creation. If you went to Malvern, I wonder if you had your eye on a specific piece?

Let’s track the journey of one of our new Slate Feature Stones.

Like most slate in the UK landscaping market, these large pieces started in a quarry in Wales and rather than being secondary processed into walling, roof tiles or chippings, they were picked out by Stone Warehouse to be delivered to Malvern for Lu and Yun.

While at the quarry we also took the opportunity to add Charcoal Slate Monoliths to the Stone Warehouse portfolio in the near future. 

Delivered into Malvern, they were now left in the capable hands of Jason at JG Landscapes to create Lu and Yun's design. Digging and lining the pond, positioning the boulders, spreading the aggregates and planting the garden as well as running a full time landscaping business is really quite an achievement. Well done to Jason and his team for making this all look so special.

The entire garden combines the Feature Slate pieces with Rustic Slate Rockery, Green Granite, Black Basalt 6mm, Black Basalt 14mm and Black Basalt 20mm. Let's look at where each stone type has been used by Lu and Yun.

There's nothing as relaxing as the gentle noise of running water from a naturally looking water feature. Both the Rustic Slate Rockery and the Slate Feature Stones have been combined to push through the planting and to also form one of the gardens key features, the cascading waterfall uses the slate to the maximum and gives such a tranquil feel.

Green Granite in a granular size has been used as the beach feature leading to the pond. Its subtle and neutral colour complements and doesn't pull your eye away from the beuatiful colours of the planting scheme. The statement pieces are in other areas of the design. The Granite plays its neutral part perfectly.

Black Basalt to compliment the Charcoal Slate has been used for the pond edging and on the pond liner. Most pond liners are black and look man-made. A thin layer of Basalt, especially creatively used in three grades gives that natural feel back to pond and coming up onto the shore blends in perfectly to the other garden features. 

Overall I think this is an amazing garden, a huge congratulations to Lu and Yun. It must be quite daunting coming to the UK to take on a RHS Brief for the first time.

What a beautiful scene as the sun starts to disappear.

 

 

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