Profile: Emma Bridgewater
The outdoors and nature has been a constant source of inspiration to long-time supporter Emma Bridgewater, founder of the iconic British pottery brand. We caught up with her to find out more about motivated her to get involved with the National Garden Scheme, what inspired the beautiful honeysuckle design created in celebration of our show garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and how her love of nature inspires her Christmas table…
When did your connection with the National Garden Scheme start?
It goes back to my childhood. I always remember my mum and stepfather, dancing with excitement when they received the letter from the local County Organiser saying their Oxfordshire garden had been chosen to open for National Garden Scheme. It was clear to me as a child of around 12 or 13 just how incredibly special this was for them. Theirs was a lovely garden and heaven to grow up with but it was not a show garden. From this time, I knew that the National Garden Scheme was about opening real gardens, created by real people. My mum held the organisation in high esteem in the 1970’s and everything I have learnt since then has reinforced this. It has a brilliantly timeless quality – opening real gardens to raise money for incredibly valuable nursing and health charities.
In 2009 I was asked by a good friend of mum’s, Elizabeth Fleming to join the National Garden Scheme Board of Trustees (then known as the council) which I was delighted to do. At Emma Bridgewater, we began a very rewarding partnership with Emma Bridgewater donating £5 from every mug sold in our very popular new flowers range which continued until 2013 and raised almost £80,000 for the National Garden Scheme. Since then we have collaborated on a number of projects including a joint collaboration with David Austin Roses in 2024 in which we donated £5 for each Bring Me Sunshine 1/2 Pint Mug sold which raised a further £22,000.
My then husband, Matthew Rice and I also opened our own garden for many years, opening first in 2016. We had bought the house, a previously tenanted cottage built on the site of a medieval castle, in an awful state. The garden was a complete mess and we completely landscaped it which was so exciting. I felt very proud of it. I was nervous opening the garden the first time because we were really inviting people in to see a work in progress, but it was just as good as I had hoped. Friends and family helped out and visitors arrived in huge numbers – it soon took on the feeling of a village fete!
Matthew continues to open Ham Court for the National Garden Scheme and in 2025 will be opening on 7th September.
Where does your passion for ceramics and your design inspiration come from?
My mother. I was shopping for a gift for my mother and I wanted to give her two cups and saucers which to me symbolised connection and a love to getting together and talking with her – at a time when I was not doing it nearly enough. I could not find what I was looking for and suddenly had a vision of the dresser from my mother’s kitchen in the shop I was in, laden with a wonderful collection of brightly coloured, mismatched pottery and I knew that I wanted to recreate that. To create a collection that was informal, functional and brought joy to those who used it.
What inspired the beautiful honeysuckle design created in celebration of the National Garden Scheme
It’s always a collaboration. I knew that it had to have yellow in it to connect it to the National Garden Scheme brand and I wanted to play into that. Yellow always has such a sparkle to it and as soon as the dark days of winter begins, I am so grateful to see a touch of yellow, first from the winter jasmine flowers and as spring approaches from the cheerful yellow daffodils. The National Garden Scheme honeysuckle design brought so brilliantly to life by artist Matthew Rice, was inspired by the woodland planting of their beautiful RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024 show garden. I’ve always loved the freedom and grace of the honeysuckle’s climbing habitat, its twirling tendrils and the incredible perfume of the flowers. A mug is the hardest thing to design because it’s such an awkward space, but it was really important to me that Matthew captured the curly feel of the tendrils to give it a sense of space and movement. I love the design we created.
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- 1/2 Pint Mugs
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- Apron
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- Cosmetic Bag
Shop the Emma Bridgewater Collection
What does nature and your own garden mean to you and how do they inspire you?
The outdoors and nature has always been important to me and a constant source of inspiration. I don’t like to spend a whole day indoors and love to walk – whether in the garden or along the banks of a river or canal in London. There is always something to see and explore. Over the years I’ve lost interest in the notion of control and am far more interested in discovering what wants to grow. I think that nature is much closer than we think and if we turn our backs, it will start putting things back. In my current house in North Norfolk, I chose not to mow the lawn one year and it turned into a wonderful field of ox-eye daisies. Seeing the daisies, cowslips and orchids emerge in late spring is always incredibly exciting to me. My hedges are no doubt the wildest in Norfolk but they give me enormous pleasure. Informality has always been my watchword!
How does your love of ceramics and nature inspire your Christmas table?
I love to bring in the green! A real Christmas tree is a must, and I pick huge bunches of bay and ivy – which grows rampantly in my overgrown hedges. I have lots of holly and also myrtle which is fantastic to pick at this time of year and it smells so lovely indoors. I’m always late to the party and to my mind the 23rd December is a perfect time to put up the tree and for the house to take on the outdoors and to be filled with the wonderful scents of nature.
I’m devoted to candles and these are a must – in large quantities. And my table is full of crockery, old things that belonged to my mum and my granny alongside some of my own Emma Bridgewater Christmas ranges. I think the new honeysuckle mugs will fit in perfectly this Christmas.
Christmas for me is all about bringing people together and making connections. It’s about not making a fuss about the food – it’s just a Sunday lunch with knobs on. And as one of originally eight siblings I don’t like the gift giving mayhem – we now we do a secret Santa which is a brilliant alternative.
What I want to see is my table full of people talking and laughing. Connecting friends and family, new and old – something which I think the National Garden Scheme does so brilliantly too, with its open gardens which welcome people to enjoy and connect with others.
