About Helen | The Make Love Not Landfill Story

I’m the face, the clay, and the studio “Womble” behind the magic. Welcome to my colourful world.

If you’ve been looking for an antidote to boring, mass-produced toxic beige decor, you are in the exact right place.

I’ve ran Make Love Not Landfill  since 2009, First in Derbyshire and now out of my studio in Treharris, South Wales. However, my creative process actually begins much higher up—right where the trees stop growing and the clouds begin.

I’ve always believed that the best ideas are found when you’re moving. For me, that means spending my best hours wandering high alpine ridges, tracking winter lines through the snowy peaks, and daydreaming in the quiet, misty valleys right here in Wales.

To me, exploring the mountains isn’t about chasing crazy daredevil speeds or conquering a summit. It’s just about learning to look at the world with a sense of wonder.

When you spend hours walking through vast, high-altitude landscapes, your mind finally clears out the noise of everyday life. You start noticing things you’d usually miss: the erratic, beautiful curves of a frost-cracked boulder, the incredibly soft palette of alpine moss, and the clean texture of wind-swept slate.

When the ride is over, I return to the warm studio.

Those high-mountain daydreams find a permanent home in the clay. The peaceful, spacious feeling of the peaks translates directly into the organic shapes of my stoneware.

Growing up, I always loved the stories of the Wombles. They were those clever creatures dedicated to making brilliant use of the things they find. Today, I bring that exact rebellious, circular spirit into my pottery.

I am constantly foraging for discarded materials to save them from a landfill legacy. Sometimes I’m dismantling broken vintage jewellery for metallic accents. You can see how this circular spirit evolved in the early 2000s reclaimed jewelry experiments, long before sustainability became a corporate buzzword. Other times I’m spending half an hour wrestling a bundle of wild, twisted ivy roots out of a Welsh bramble patch on a mountain bike ride.

By embedding these reclaimed artifacts and upcycled treasures directly into the clay walls, we capture a tiny piece of that wild, mountaintop magic. It turns a memory of the high winds into an heirloom piece of art for your morning table.

I completely refuse to believe that sustainability has to look clinical, boring, or beige. Instead, I flood my pieces with rich, heavily textured, high-gloss dopamine colours inspired by wild forest fungi and bright tropical reefs. Our work is a joyful, striking celebration of nature.

I treat this pottery studio as a movement to prove that art-house quality design can actively protect our local landscapes, our families, and our garden pollinators.

When I’m not covered in clay in Treharris, you can find me hosting our long-distance studio hours and virtual pottery play dates with our global community of creators.

Or, quite often, you’ll find me packing my bags to run our breathtaking Creative Alpine Retreats. Hosted in the spectacular mountain landscapes of Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France, these intimate, fully catered getaways are part of the exact same movement. We are proving that creative play, wild mountain adventure, and luxury quality can actively run hand-in-hand with planetary care.