Prehistoric plants: How to grow a dinosaur garden

In our new Evolution Garden, we’re planting a dinosaur garden in front of our iconic building.

The garden will have plants like those found in the Carboniferous, Jurassic and Cretaceous as well as rocks and fossils from those periods. When it opens this summer, you’ll be able experience what it would’ve been like to walk with the dinosaurs.

In the meantime, why not grow your own small dinosaur garden at home using plants that many dinosaurs would recognise.

Fossil forests

We know what plants were around at the time of the dinosaurs because of fossils. By looking at plant fossils that lie within or on layers of rocks of a certain age, we know about what grew at that time.

Plant fossils are made when a plant is covered by mud or sand, and then eventually becomes buried deep in the planet. Over time, minerals replace the organic material, such as wood, and the plant becomes fossilised.

Fossilised plants can tell us a lot about what the world was like millions of years ago. By looking at the growth rings within fossil wood, we can create a picture of what the climate was like when that tree was growing.

Dr Paul Kenrick, one of our experts on the early evolution of life, says, ‘Fossil wood is quite common. This log [shown in the image below] was part of a conifer tree that grew in a forest in Dorset over 145 million years ago. The wood suffered some natural decay before being buried in sediments. Minerals dissolved in water eventually precipitated inside the wood as a type of quartz, turning it to stone.’

We don't just have to look to fossils to learn about prehistoric plants, there are plants on Earth today that are very similar to those that grew millions of years ago. These ancient plants, or their close relatives, remain as living records of ancient landscapes.

Plants of the Carboniferous Period

Plants flourished even before dinosaurs roamed the planet. In the Carboniferous Period, 359 to 299 million years ago, plants grew in swampy, green bogs that over time became the coal deposits we use today as fossil fuels. 

Among the plants that grew back then were seed ferns. These had strong, woody trunks, allowing them to grow up to 12 metres tall and support a crown of branches. Their leaves were fern-like, but unlike ferns they reproduced using seeds, not spores. These are now extinct, so instead, we’re putting a fossilised seed fern trunk in our gardens and planting living tree ferns to evoke the feeling of walking under this extinct species.

Giant horsetails also grew in the Carboniferous. These plants had lightweight trunks that grew hollow like a pipe and had a narrow crown of branches. Today there are around 15 species of horsetail, all of which are smaller than their giant Carboniferous relatives. These plants spread easily, so we’re planting our horsetails in shallow drainage channels called swales, which have barriers that will help to contain their underground stems, or rhizomes.

Plants of the Jurassic Period 

During the time of the dinosaurs, woody trees became more common. In among a ground cover of cycads and ferns grew gingkoes and conifers, such as monkey puzzle and cypress trees. 

Cycads were one of the first plants to be pollinated by insects, with beetles transferring pollen from the slender male cones on one plant to the female cones on another plant.

Conifers and ginkgoes exploded in diversity during the Jurassic Period, 201 to 145 million years ago. Today only a small fragment of the species that existed back then remain. We’ll be planting the species Gingko biloba in our gardens. Also called the maidenhair tree, its little, fan-shaped leaves turn a beautiful yellow in autumn and will bring a lovely injection of colour to our gardens. 

As well as gingkoes, we’ll also be planting Araucaria araucana, a monkey puzzle species that’s been on Earth for around 200 million years as well as the Wollemi pine, Wollemia nobilis, which was once thought to be extinct. In 1994, a few of these pines were found hidden in a narrow canyon in the Australian Blue Mountains. Since then, a project has been started to plant the species at sites across the world to safeguard its survival. Come and see this unlikely survivor of ancient forests in our grounds.

Plants of the Cretaceous Period

The Cretaceous Period, 145 to 66 million years ago, is not only known for the appearance of the ferocious T. rex but for the remarkable appearance of flowering plants. 

To introduce scent and colour to our garden, we’ll be planting a range of flowering plants. We’re going to use representatives of groups that evolved during the Cretaceous, including palms and shrubs, such as Calycanthus, Magnolia and Illicium, and ground cover including Acorus, Pachysandra  and Sarcoccoca. 

As well as these we’ll also be planting palm trees, one of the most ancient flowering plants. They thrive in warm, tropical climates and the distribution of their fossils can help us understand how climate has changed over long periods of time. In fact, fossil palm fruits have been found on the coast of southern England, indicating that the climate in this region was once much warmer than it is today.