Glee 2011

Actually, there are two good reasons why I made the 180 mile round trip pilgrimage. One is to show moral support for a manufacturer I admire enormously and the second is because another exhibitor all but begged me to review their new offerings. And while it was well worth the journey to validate the first objective, the second never came about because, on the day, and despite advance warning of my planned visit, there was no-one suitable (by which I mean courteous and personable) to talk to.

Pride of place must go to Westminster Stone's new venture in league with the National Trust. This new National Trust Collection was 'soft-launched' at Chelsea back in the bright and heady days of spring before we had a chance to be let down by yet another soggy summer, and the range was featured on this website at the time. The National Trust is a quintessentially British brand, reeking of stately homes, well-filled bodices and afternoon tea at inflated prices. As a brand, it is bigger, more recognisable, and has more 'customers' than any paving manufacturer. Its repository of architectural history should make it ripe for benign exploitation, but for whatever reason, previous attempts to 'monetise' (as the current term seems to be) this treasury of cherished paving and landscaping have withered and faded.

The new link-up with Westminster Stone promises much. For the NT, it is a new beginning with fresh ideas, while for Westminster, it is a fantastic opportunity that can provide much needed impetus to a sector of the industry that has struggled to hold its own against the onslaught of cheap imported materials. For them, the NT collection will not be a sideline, but a major part of their business, which is guaranteed to focus their attention on making a real success of this new venture.

Show regulars, Natural Paving , had quite a few new products but were adopting a radically different approach by not launching any of them at all. Instead, the plan was to show what they had available and then gauge the feedback from visitors to their stand. So, if one particular flagstone or sett was widely admired, there's a good chance it would appear within their range at some time next year, whereas if another flagstone was tut-tutted, it will probably sink back into obscurity.

Obviously, they had displays of their currently popular products, such as the York Green sandstone. They also had a show of native walling stone, and the unmistakeable Pennine (Namurian) gritstone which features big, chunky grains in shades of cream, grey and gentle buff. This is an underused stone outside of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and it deserves a wider audience. In ashlar form, it's bursting with character, but when sawn and dressed as pillar, copings or pier caps, it exudes a rugged solidity that is hard to match.

The most obvious of the new pavings is a multi-hued quartzite, which has a gently riven surface texture and comes in three modular sizes. I struggled with this one and I think that is because the range of colours is just too wide for my sensitive visual cortex. There are dusky olives and rusty oranges, tans, greys, buffs and creams. It would be easy, in theory, to create two or three individual palettes, with, say, the khaki olives and muted browns in one set, and the vibrant tans and buffs in another. This, for me, would make it a more coherent product. It's good quality stone, but there's just too much colour variation.

It seemed that BorderStone , the only Aggregate Industries imprint to turn up this year, had actually taken over the whole central section of the ever-shrinking Hall 4. Their multiple display stands stretched from horizon to horizon, one featuring paving, another the sort of garden ornamentation that appeals to the Garden Centre buyers that now dominate Glee's core audience. As mentioned previously, I didn't get to talk to anyone at length, but there will be a separate review of AI's plans and products in a week or two, so watch out for that.

Strata Stones are another show regular and a brand that seems to grow in both turnover and stand size with each passing year. There was a lot to see on this huge stand, but not all of it falls into what I consider to be my remit. Water features are, patently, a big seller for the aforesaid Garden Centre Buyers, but hold zero interest for me. I find they are too subject to the fickle fortunes of fashion, and I reckon that, in 10 years time, it will be possible to identify exactly which year, and probably the season, in which a particular garden was constructed by the water features it contains. Last year, it was granite, and before that it was slate. This year, the theme is very definitely rainbow sandstone.

Somewhat scaled back from previous showings at Glee, and unfortunately tucked out of the way behind a sprawling display of unnecessary Chinese tat, Global Stone are a very welcome return exhibitor. A sparse display compared to some of the others, but very evocative of the latest brochure, and actually very calming and stylish.

In amongst the miniature displays, a couple of very appealing new products lurked, and the stand-out item for me is what was called a "Crinoidal Limestone" back in the mists of time when I was studying geology, which Global have now dubbed as "Neptune". It's a creamy-grey-greeny honed limestone which is bursting with fossil crinoids, a sort of paleozoic starfish which looks more like a plant (hence their unofficial name of "Sea Lilies"). A fascinating rock, but how suitable is it for the British climate? I suppose it will be similar to Travertine, but hopefully much more competent and less prone to crumbling. Personally, I see it as a gorgeous detail, maybe complementing internal flooring. In larger areas, I fear the gorgeous fossils will become lost.

A Glee perennial, Longborough Concrete stuck with the show when many others left, and it's beginning to pay dividends. Last year, they decided to take a chance by showing a range of concrete reproduction troughs and planters as an adjunct to their paving range. And wouldn't you know it, the troughs and planters were a wow, and so this year, they've expanded the range, and given over 80% of their stand to showing these, with the paving playing a peripheral role, and they've never been busier.

One company I had not expected to see here this year is Lincoln's Living Stone . Word filtered through earlier this year that they had succumbed to the economic onslaught, but, as Mark Twain once said, news of their demise was greatly exaggerated and after arranging a refinancing deal, their future is secure and they are back with their offering of bagged aggregates, imported stone and wet-cast paving.

There were quite a few other hard-landscaping suppliers spread throughout the hall. Plenty of bagged aggregate suppliers, but nothing startlingly new. LaFarge were half-heartedly showing off their exposed aggregate decorative concrete but they were more interested in selling their pre-bagged mortar and concrete mixes.