A Painted Beehive | Garden Art 

The hazy mid-morning sun is casting a glow across Sophie’s colour-filled garden as we arrive. In the far corner, her new creation catches the light between beds of sub-tropical shrubs and plants. It’s a beautifully painted beehive, and it's what we’ve come to photograph. 

Sophie helped co-found Seasalt with her husband Neil. As Seasalt’s first ever print designer, her eye for colour and pattern shaped our design handwriting into what it is today. Between designing prints for our collection and crafting beautiful items for our shops, Sophie is a keen gardener and has been working to make their outdoor space a haven for wildlife, bees and other important pollinators.  

The latest addition is a beehive, which Sophie has painted to become a piece of functional art in garden. “Neil bought a beehive so that we could harvest honey,” Sophie tells us. “I just thought it would be really nice to decorate it.”  

“The design was loosely inspired by folk art and Quimper pottery from Brittany in France, which often features naïve flowers created with the brushstrokes. I didn’t have a big plan. I just made a few marks in my sketchbook to make sure I didn't completely mess up, and then I started decorating. I like to let shapes and patterns evolve as I go.” 

“I'd just been gifted a set of beautiful Japanese paintbrushes from a friend, so I wanted to play with those. The plan was to paint one tiny bit at a time, but then, as usual, I got carried away and painted the whole thing. We've even got an extra section for the beehive in case we get so many bees we have to expand the space - and that's all painted and ready.” 

“I've always loved painting and decorating, adding pattern and colour to anything and everything you can see. We've been doing up our house recently and I've been painting the toilet, painting pots for the kitchen, trays, all sorts of things. And I hope to do a lot more of it, because I love it.”