A Plantsperson's Palette: Rebecca Lloyd Jones on Material Thinking for The Transient Garden
Garden Club London's in-house designer takes a horticulturist's view of hard landscaping. For her first Chelsea garden as lead designer, she talks us through the thinking behind a compact balcony dressed in our Brewhouse porcelain.
There is a particular kind of designer who thinks in plants first and everything else second. Rebecca Lloyd Jones is one of them. Her route into landscape design ran through community gardens and the RHS rather than architecture school, and that sequence shows in her work. Ask her how she approaches a new space and she will begin with colour combinations, seasonal scenes and the way light moves across leaves. Only once those pictures are in her head does she turn her attention to the materials that will frame them.
It is an inversion of the more familiar design process, and it produces gardens that feel quietly inevitable. The hard landscaping never fights the planting because the planting was there first. For The Transient Garden, her balcony design for RHS Chelsea 2026 in partnership with Hamptons, that order of operations has led her to our Brewhouse porcelain.
Starting with the Scene
The Transient Garden responds to the reality of modern city life. It is a space for young professionals whose homes shift more often than their parents' did, a balcony conceived as a retreat that can work for morning coffee, evening entertaining and everything in between. Every element is modular and light enough to be moved by two people, designed to leave with its owner rather than stay behind.
The planting leads with a palette of oranges, purples and white, chosen to sing against the greys and blues of the surrounding city. Armeria maritima 'Morning Star White' and Eschscholzia californica 'Orange King' carry the colour story. Calamagrostis 'Glenorchy Fireworks' gives it movement. A Cornus kousa 'Cappuccino' provides the architecture. It is a scheme that could easily be overwhelmed by the wrong hard landscaping, and Rebecca is candid about what she was looking for.
“I chose a soft palette of materials for the design, including natural timber and aged red brick to really bring the planting to life. The warm tones of the Brewhouse porcelain are a perfect addition to this.”
Why Brewhouse
Our Brewhouse porcelain was developed to read like reclaimed terracotta. Warm, softly variegated, gently weathered. It sits in that useful middle ground where it feels old without feeling rustic, and rich without feeling heavy. For a scheme built around aged red brick and timber, the tonal family was an easy match.
What is more interesting is how Rebecca arrived at it. Her first instinct had been our terracotta tiles, which would have given her the exact handmade quality she was chasing. Those tiles belong indoors though, and a Chelsea balcony has to cope with British weather, footfall and the practicalities of a travelling garden.
“After some great consultation back and forth with the sales team we arrived at a more suitable outdoor solution that would offer the same depth and tone,” she says. “The texture and warm hue of the tiles will really bring the planting to life without overpowering it, and they help to tie the whole space together perfectly.”
The Weight Question
Balcony gardens have a constraint that full show gardens rarely do. Everything has to come in through a door, up a lift and onto a structure with a finite loading capacity. The Transient Garden takes this further by insisting that nothing in the design weigh more than two people can carry. Planters are lightweight with false bases. Furniture folds. Structures come apart.
"Balcony gardens often have tight restrictions for weight allowance," Rebecca explains. “Using a thin format porcelain allows for more flexibility when adding planters and furniture to the design."
Thin format porcelain is one of those quietly transformative products. A fraction of the weight of traditional paving, fully frost-proof, stain-resistant and, in the case of Brewhouse, beautiful.
The Transient Garden is, by its own description, not permanent. It is built for people who rent, who move, who treat home as a series of chapters rather than a single fixed setting. That sounds as though it might call for neutral, forgettable materials. In fact, the opposite is true.
“The material choices are intended to blend harmoniously together,” Rebecca says. “The aged look settles the balcony, giving a sense of time and multiple tenants over the years."
See it at Chelsea
The Transient Garden, designed by Rebecca Lloyd Jones for Garden Club London and sponsored by Hamptons, will be on the balcony gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show from 19 to 23 May 2026. After the show the garden will be relocated to a community space, with details to follow.
