Designer Professor David Stevens is no stranger to creating memorable gardens at BBC Gardeners’ World Live, the show he opened with Geoff Hamilton, but this year he’s doing something completely different. Towering ginkgo, multi-stemmed tree ferns and dinosaurs will guide visitors through the history of plants.
The award-winning designer has teamed up with Professor Alice Roberts of Birmingham University to create The Garden of Evolution which traces the development of plants and animals over 450 million years.
“It’s a tall order,” says David, “but it’s going to be really interesting.”
Visitors will enter the walk-through 20m by 20m exhibit via a dark tunnel with pinpricks of light representing early life forms before entering the Cambrian period, which will have two long pools, rocks and waterfalls.
“Basically, there was just rock and water,” explains David. “There were very few life forms.”
The landscape will gradually become swamp-like – “It’ll be murky and muddy, a bit slimy, because that’s precisely what it was.”
The plants will gradually change from the earliest mosses, through ginkgo, horsetail and the first flowering shrubs and trees to early crops, such as millet.
David and Alice, who is well known for TV’s Digging for Britain and Coast, are working with specialist nurseries and importers to add Wollemi pines, 9m high ginkgos and unusual multi-stemmed 3m tree ferns.
Birmingham University are 3D printing dinosaurs for the exhibit and there will also be trilobites crawling over rocks.
The walk ends at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research’s Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment programme, a current research project that’s looking at how trees will react to rising levels of CO2.
David describes it as a living landscape rather than a pretty garden with lots of things in flower.
“Things will not necessarily be in peak condition; they wouldn’t be in a natural environment. It will be a really interesting experience. It tells a story.
“Lots of plant life is being threatened so I think it’s very pertinent, really interesting and a real spectacle.”
Highlights of BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2026
The APL Avenue, which showcases the skill of members of the Association of Professional Landscapers, celebrates its 10th anniversary at this year’s show.
Among the entries will be an interactive garden by TJ Kennedy Garden and Landscape Design with visual and audio elements celebrating the relationship between man and nature. Old Lancashire mills that have been reclaimed by nature have inspired a design by Gunns & Roses, while Dave Hodson Gardens uses the cult 60s French film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as its starting point.
Show Gardens include the Making Change Happen Garden highlighting the work of The Nelson Trust. It will be relocated to HMP Eastwood Park, Gloucestershire after the show.
There will be an exotic urban garden, The Heart of the Jungle, a traditional country cottage garden in The Artist’s Garden, while The Power of Pink Plants will celebrate plants in every shade of pink.
There will be 30 Beautiful Borders at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2026 all inspired by the theme of ‘Once Upon a Time’.
The Make a Metre Matter campaign returns to encourage gardeners to transform a metre of outdoor space to support wildlife and biodiversity.
Meanwhile, the school wheelbarrow display has a Make a Meal Matter theme with pupils growing ingredients for cooking.
Presenters Monty Don, Adam Frost and Frances Tophill will be among the many speakers at the show, and Adam will be hosting a Tasting Table with cooking demonstrations. New this year is the Smoke & Fire Zone, a live-fire cooking and outdoor living area, and the QVC Outdoor Living Stage with lifestyle inspiration.
The real stars are the plants though and the Floral Marquee will have many of the country’s top nurseries, including a centenary display by HW Hyde and Son an immersive celebration of mushrooms by Caley Brothers, and the International Orchid Show.
BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2026 is at the NEC Birmingham from June 18-21. Tickets are on sale on the website. They include entry to the Good Food Show Summer, which runs alongside.
You can read about more of my visits to garden shows here.
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