Butterworth guided the selection so that the plants grew well together and made sense as a whole.
On a practical level, they were carefully chosen to ensure the audience could clearly see the athletes and performers move through the space.
He said: “The beauty and rugged Scottish landscape has inspired poets, artists and nature lovers and to bring a piece of that to the wider world last night was a highlight of my career as a plantsman.
“It was the most challenging and thus most exciting horticultural installation I’ve been involved in.”
Butterworth described the experience – and the challenge – as unique.
He said: “As a gardener you don’t usually get to work with premier set designers, in a stadium on the world-stage. I felt galvanised watching the ceremony last night.
“When the stage designer Amalie White said the whole garden had to be moved in two minutes flat, that just added to the fun.”
The garden used ornamental grasses to provide a baseline texture and featured plants including Molinia, Sesleria, Calamgrostis, Agastache, Catanache, Perovskia, Sanguisorba, Selenium, Nepeta and resilient thistles.