Award-winning garden designer Paul Stone has been appointed Head of Horticulture at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

With a 30-year record of building gardens, twice winning best in show at the Hampton Court Flower Show and four times winning gold at the Chelsea Flower Show, Paul is a well-known face in the horticulture world.

In his new role, Paul is in charge of a team of 50, working within the Eden Project’s Rainforest and Mediterranean Biomes, the outdoor gardens, 250-acre outer estate and the Eden nursery at nearby Pentewan.

Paul has been part of the Eden horticultural team from the beginning, initially supervising the manufacture of the 83,000 tonnes of top soil made from recycled waste for the global garden based in a former clay quarry.

He stayed with the project to oversee the building of the Eden landscape, including one of the biggest challenges - the complex planting of the Rainforest Biome.

Paul said: “From the start, I knew that this was going to be the best landscaping project in the UK and I was thrilled to be part of it.”

Looking forward to leading the team, he said: “I am so proud to be part of an expert team of horticulturists and scientists. We have a robust five-year garden development plan of unique displays with a clear message about the essential interaction between plants and people.”

Over his career designing and building high-quality private gardens and RHS show gardens, Paul has managed landscape companies throughout the South of England including Squires in West London and his own companies in Brighton and Falmouth.  He moved to Cornwall in 1998.

With a number of exciting projects coming up, such as the first Korean garden in the UK opening in Spring 2020, a carnivorous plant display in the outdoor garden, as well as building a new South African Veld Garden which is opening in 2022, Paul is passionate about Eden telling stories through plants in a way that no other garden does.

Mike Maunder, Eden’s Director of Life Sciences said: “I have huge respect for Paul and I look forward to working closely with him as we unroll a set of new gardens and landscapes at Eden.”