Maker and gardener Beth Gregg works at the meeting point of craft, horticulture and natural beauty.
The founder of Claverton Cloches, Beth and her small team handcraft Victorian-inspired cast-iron cloches from a barn workshop outside Bath — pieces now found in some of the world's most celebrated gardens, from Highgrove and Kew to Balmoral and Holkham. Trained as a plant biochemist before a chapter in the corporate world, she brings a scientist's eye and a designer's sensibility to objects made to weather, age, and be passed on.
In this conversation, set against the backdrop of the beautiful Damson Farm, we speak with Beth about materials and lineage, the slow intelligence of plants, and what the hand leaves behind that a machine never can.
You studied plant biochemistry before the corporate years. Does the scientist in you ever show up in how you approach the work, in the way you test things, observe things, or think about problems?
Creativity and science are often set apart, but in my experience they’re deeply intertwined. In my work, they come together as a marriage of materials, function and beauty.
There’s an instinct to observe closely, to adjust, to test again. In the workshop, that might be refining how a pane of glass sits within a frame, or how a metal weathers over time. In the garden, it’s noticing what thrives, what struggles, what surprises you. I’ve always been drawn to the intelligence of the natural world; how much is happening beneath the surface and the fantastically clever biochemical mechanisms that facilitate life, and I think that shapes how I approach problem-solving.
Cast iron, glass, putty, copper, brass — every one carries centuries of history within it. When you chose these materials, were you choosing for function, for beauty, for lineage, or did those three turn out to be the same choice?
They turned out to be the same choice. I was drawn to them initially because they felt right — visually and materially. But very quickly it became clear that their beauty is inseparable from their function, and both are rooted in lineage. These are materials that have endured because they work, and because they age well.
There’s a certain honesty to them. They’re analogue, in a way, and over time they gather character rather than degrade. Choosing them feels like an antidote to a culture of mass production and disposability.
It was important to create pieces that don’t sit apart from the garden, but settle into it and improve with time.
Is there a material you feel deeply loyal to — a particular glass, a putty recipe, a technique that you'd be reluctant to change even if something easier came along?
Metal, in all its forms. Cast iron, steel, copper, zinc, silver. I find it endlessly interesting. The ways it can be worked: cast, forged, welded, rolled, soldered, hammered, folded — each process leaving its own imprint.
And then how it ages. How a patina develops, or can be encouraged. It doesn’t feel static; it continues to evolve. It’s a material that carries both strength and sensitivity, which is why I’m so drawn to it. I’ve loved learning to work with new metals and techniques over the years, and I’m excited to continue bringing those into my designs.
You're reviving a Victorian form, but the gesture underneath of creating shelter for a seedling is much older than that. How far back do you feel the thread runs when you're working?
Much further back. Cloches were used by French market gardeners as early as the 18th century, but last year at the ‘Unearthed’ exhibition at the British Library, I came across a 17th-century book by John Evelyn, open to a page of gardening tools, and there was something remarkably like a cloche. It shifted my sense of the timeline.
When I’m working, I do feel that thread. Gardens have a way of stepping outside of time — the only rhythm that really matters is the movement through the seasons. That’s what I think about when designing; creating things that feel at home now, but could just as easily have existed then.
What does your hand leave in a cloche that a machine couldn't? And what have you had to protect to keep it that way?
A certain subtlety. No two are ever quite the same, be it the nuance in the casting or the small variations in the finish. Sometimes it’s as slight as a thumbprint in the putty, a ghost trace of the hand that made it. They’re not imperfections, but signs of something being made rather than produced.
To keep that, it’s meant holding onto slower, more manual processes, and resisting the urge to over-refine or standardise. There’s always a pressure to streamline, but some of that nuance is easily lost.It’s really about protecting the feeling of the piece, keeping a sense of the hand within it.
Your workshop sits in an old barn outside Bath. What does the landscape around it, the fields, the stone, the particular quality of light, put into the work?
The landscape shapes the work in a quiet but constant way. The bucolic English countryside — the charm and quaintness of it, and the steady shift through the seasons — encourages a certain restraint, and a sensitivity to how things sit within a landscape.
Bath itself has been a constant source of inspiration to me. There’s a deep beauty to the Georgian design, with a distinctly Roman sensibility and later layered with Victorian detail. I’ve lived here for years and still notice something new almost every day.
It’s also a lesson in enduring, good design, one that weathers changing tastes and remains timeless. That’s something I think about often when designing.
What's a flower or plant that you find yourself returning to, year after year, in your own garden?
It’s a difficult question as there are so many to choose from, and each holds something different. Scent, in particular, is so evocative of moments and I can return instantly to a time or place. And then there’s a seasonal memory too; like seeing magnolia blossom each year brings me back to all the springs that came before.
Some plants remind me of being in the garden as a child with my family. Others of romantic bouquets, or moments they were given to me, or shared by plantspeople I’ve met along the way. There are those I’ve brought home from Chelsea, and others that were already in the garden, quietly restored over time. They all feel special in their own way. Perhaps together they form a kind of commune, too.
Over the years of gardening and making cloches, has anything surprised you about how plants behave, or what they actually need?
How little they need, in many cases. It’s often less about doing more, and more about doing less, creating the right conditions, and then stepping back. Good soil, a bit of shelter, the right moment.
There’s something in the balance between nurturing and allowing space. You can protect and support, but they also need the chance to find their own way, to develop a certain resilience. Plants have an intelligence of their own. Given half a chance, they’ll often do more than you expect.
If someone came to you wanting to start a garden from scratch, unsure where to begin, what would you tell them?
I’d start by thinking about how you want to use it: is it a space for entertaining, or somewhere you can raise the drawbridge and find a bit of solitude? Often it’s both, but it helps to be clear on what you’re drawing from it.
Then think about when you’d like it to be at its most spectacular. For me, it’s May and June, with that flush of acid green foliage, with everything bursting into colour.
I’d also think about how you’ll inhabit it. Places to sit: somewhere for a morning coffee, somewhere to write, somewhere to talk late into the evening, or simply to watch the pollinators and birds going about their business.
And then the wider picture, how it sits within the landscape, and how it will grow over time. A garden is never static; it’s something you build with an eye to what it might become — so choice of materials is really important, and large visual anchor points too, like trees and structures. Finally, I adore running water, it adds such an aliveness, so I’d push to add a rill too where possible.
At the heart of Commune is a simple idea: bringing likeminded people together. Who is in your commune?
I think my commune is a shifting constellation of people who connect to different parts of me. It’s probably the most important thing — because it’s the people around us who hold a mirror up, illuminating parts of ourselves we might not otherwise see. I feel very grateful for everyone who crosses my orbit, whether briefly or over many years, they all shape the experience of it. And sometimes those connections aren’t even in person, but come through someone’s work or expression. In that sense, my commune probably transcends the living.
There are those friends who bring fun and laughter. Those who, over coffee and wine, unravel the existential threads, and finally the creative ones too, where novel ideas are thrown around freely and often lead somewhere unexpected.
And then, if we allow it to stretch a little further, there are those whose work has moved me deeply — poets like Mary Oliver or Seamus Heaney. Music would have to come into it too, pop icons, folk singers, techno DJs — the works! Finally, an endless stream of gardeners, plantspeople, designers, artists and architects, who foster my curiosity, from whom I draw design inspiration and build the confidence to create.
It’s less about any one person, and more about the interplay between them. That’s what makes my commune feel so alive.
Explore more of Beth and her team's work at clavertoncloches.com or follow her @clavertoncloches.
Special thank you to Alison Jenkins at Damson Farm for the generous use of her gardens.