This year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show demonstrated the growing interest and resurgence in natural materials and traditional crafts, with earthen structures and natural finishes featured across several of the show’s most celebrated gardens.
Clayworks was proud to contribute to two medal-winning show gardens. The Killik & Co ‘A Seed in Time’ Garden by Baz Grainger offered a sculptural rainwater-harvesting structure inspired by traditional straw bale and reed construction, finished in Clayworks Exterior Rustic Arakabe plaster with straw incorporated throughout.
The textured earthen finish grounded the large-scale structure within its landscape setting, providing material coherence and a low-carbon surface to a garden focused on biodiversity, climate resilience, and ecological stewardship.
Meanwhile, The Boodles Garden, designed by Catherine MacDonald, celebrated the heritage of Historic Royal Palaces through a series of carefully considered references. These ranged from a hand-painted ceiling by mural artist Tess Newall, inspired by the decorative paintwork of Queen Charlotte’s Cottage at Kew Palace, to intricate metalwork featuring grape vines, paying tribute to the Great Vine at Hampton Court Palace.
The garden incorporated Clayworks Exterior Rustic in a grey shade within its architectural elements, creating a naturally textured backdrop to a clever jewel-toned planting scheme inspired by a 17th century damask used for Mary of Modena’s canopied bed at Kensington Palace.
Chelsea 2026 also highlighted a wider resurgence of interest in earth-based materials within landscape and architectural design. The Lady Garden Foundation’s ‘Silent No More’ Garden featured a striking lime-rendered structure inspired by the ceramic sculptures of Basque artist Eduardo Chillida. Elsewhere, The ‘Project Giving Back’ Garden featured towering red sandstone cliffs coloured with natural ochre pigments, sitting amongst pine woodland.
Adding to our presence at the show, Clayworks co-founder and artist Adam Weismann unveiled Earth Pulse in The Sightsavers Garden: We Start With Sight But We Don’t Stop There. Crafted from clay, lime, natural earth pigments and moulded from cork bark, the multi-sensory sculpture explores the unseen rhythms that connect all living things and our enduring relationship with the natural world.
From earthen plasters to natural pigments to traditional craft techniques, Chelsea 2026 demonstrated that designers are increasingly embracing materials rooted in the earth. As interest grows in healthier, lower-carbon and more meaningful ways of building, clay and natural finishes are once again proving their relevance in shaping our design landscape.
The Killik & Co ‘A Seed in Time’ Garden Case Study can be found here.
Photographs by Clayworks.
