Designer Products At The SGD Autumn Conference 2017

The SGD Conferences are always a landmark in our year. We love being able to see lots of our clients face-to-face. What was also noticeable on Saturday, when the Autumn Conference took place in Kensington, was the number of new faces. It's great to meet so many freshly qualified designers entering our industry. Steve Goulds, Estimator at our South-East London Showroom, and Craig Potter, our Garden Design Director, represented London Stone at the event. It's feast or famine on the stands during the day, as delegates floods out of seminars for coffee breaks and lunch and disappear again in the blink of an eye. “We grab a cup of tea to fortify ourselves,” says Steve, “and are inundated for forty-five minutes.” With four hundred designers doing the rounds in such short bursts of time, you can imagine how busy we are!

This year, the theme of the conference, Water Ways, explored the versatility of water in garden design; something for which our DesignClad is ideal, as it makes a clean minimalist background to water features. Which made us all the more delighted when Andrew Wilson mentioned his choice of Dark Steel DesignClad in his Gold Medal-winning garden, Breaking Ground, at Chelsea this year, in his talk, Making a Splash. Thank you, Andrew. Our DesignClad, launched over a year ago, is, in response to your feedback, will be available in 2018 in a standard 5mm thickness and as a 1500 x 1000mm maximum format. This allows for easier handling on site. However, if you'd like the larger 3000 x 1000mm format, we're still very happy to obtain that for you. DesignBoard composite decking, which we first-launched at The Landscape Show in September, continues to create a lot of interest, especially as it's not trying to imitate wood. We're certainly not going to stop stocking Millboard, which is a superbly realistic alternative to wooden decking, but DesignBoard offers a very contemporary choice for modern designs, with an extra-sleek look thanks to its clip installation, which removes the need for screw holes and reinforces its clean lines.

Also raising interest was our new venture into stocking Schellevis concrete paving. Many of you will know that this long-established company, based in The Netherlands, is a premium manufacturer of concrete products in the horticultural sector, producing dramatic large-format concrete slabs that combine plenty of character with a chunky linearity that can be allowed to soften with weathering to create a more traditional look. We're pleased to say that we are the Schellevis stockist for London and the South-East, with products soon to be on display in our showrooms around the M25, and available for delivery from our depot. The SGD Conferences are always inspirational events, with a real energy, from so many creatives coming together. We'll look forward to seeing you at the next Conference in Spring 2018. In the meantime, don't forget our new horticultural adviser, Jamie Butterworth, is on hand to advise how best to realise and source the planting designs you have in mind. And if you'd like more information on any of our products, just pick up the phone or click on Live Chat at the top of the page.