If Arthur Parkinson (the 23-year-old mastermind behind the gorgeous garden at English potter Emma Bridgewater’s vast Stoke-on-Trent headquarters) has a holy trinity of garden inspiration, it is surely Beatrix Potter, Sarah Raven, and the late, great Duchess of Devonshire.
Photography by Arthur Parkinson except where noted.
When Arthur first saw the yard in February 2015 there was little to suggest that it could one day be a cutting garden paradise It was the dullest day you...
...could imagine and sleeting It was absolutely bleak but I fell in love and saw such potential Back then empty raised beds and fruit trees were the only things here
Arthur spent the winter weaving the birch arches (using self seeded silver birch saplings) to link the raised beds and provide structure for sweet peas that are sown in the autumn to give bigger, earlier blooms the following summer.
The beds are also full of clever but basic homemade supports using grids of birch sticks.
Everything in the garden is grown on site, in two greenhouses on top of the factory roof. And the planting is carefully choreographed to provide a continuous succession of flowers.
Successional planting guarantees a continual display of color in the raised beds from the first bright tulips through to late-summer dahlias. In the center of the garden an unused table has been painted Moroccan blue and repurposed as a plant stand/hen shelter.
Arthur loves rich color: Dahlia Totally Tangerine is used in many of the summer pots along with D. Waltzing Matilda and Cosmos Antiquity along with some billowing foliage, from Panicum Frosted Explosion or, in this case, millet.
Flowers and farmyard animals have always been at the heart of Emma Bridgewater’s pottery designs, which have been produced in Stoke-on-Trent for three decades and in her current factory for the past 20 years.
Wildlife is key to the spirit and the storytelling of this space, linking the factory to the garden.
Photograph by Clare Coulson.
Crested Appleyard ducklings roam freely around the beds while the chickens usually sit in the shade of their chic black coop, apart from a daily run around the yard.