Archive for category: The Dyer’s Garden

Dyer’s broom (Genista tinctoria) in full flower

Madder (Rubia tinctorum)

Woad (Isatis tinctoria) on the left at the back, lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum) in the centre with yellow flowers and the purple flower heads of saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria) just visible on the right at the back

A first-year woad plant (Isatis tinctoria)

Wild madder (Rubia peregrina) rambling through the garden and beginning to form seeds

Saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria) with its purple thistle-like flower heads

Yellow cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) with its pretty yellow flowers

Yellow cosmos flowers give lovely yellow and rust dyes and I usually collect the flower heads as they begin to fade and then use them in a solar dye pot. For a rich burnt orange colour, add soda ash to the jar.

Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)

I set up a solar dye pot with goldenrod and after 24 hours a pretty lemon yellow is developing. I used the dead flower heads only because I just can’t bear to cut the flowering heads.

As my new dye garden is so small I have had to limit the number of dye plants I grow. So I have decided to grow only native dye plants, or plants like woad and madder that were introduced into Britain at an early date.

Last year the woad crop was very disappointing. No self-seeded woad plants grew and the seeds I sowed produced only a few plants. However, this year has made up for it and I have many woad plants growing well. Weld, too, has grown better this year.

Weld in flower

The dyer’s madder is in a separate bed, as it can be very invasive, but the bedstraws are developing well in the dye garden. I have hedge bedstraw (Galium mollugo, also known as Galium album), lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum) and northern bedstraw (Galium boreale). I have also managed to find a supplier of plants of wild madder (Rubia peregrina) so I hope the plants I bought will thrive. (The supplier was www.wildflowers.co.uk and they will send plants overseas although that can be very expensive.)

Lady’s bedstraw with woad in the background

Hedge bedstraw

Wild madder in a pot with woad and saw-wort in the background

The dyer’s broom (Genista tinctoria) is just coming into flower and the saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria) is also starting to flower.

Dyer’s broom

Saw-wort

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

The yarrow is growing really well this year.

This has not been a good year for me health-wise and it has not been a good year in the garden, either. The weather has been wetter than I have ever known it to be here in the south of England in the Summer – weeks of rain with little sun or warmth. Problems with my hip have meant that gardening is not possible for me, so I have to rely on family and friends for help but there is little they can do against the onslought of slugs, snails, rain and wind.

Not a single self-sown seed from my woad and weld plants has germinated and only one plant resulted from the two successive sowings I made of woad seeds. The weld seeds I sowed germinated fairly well but the seedlings have failed to grow because of the wet and look as if they will never reach a size suitable for transplanting to the dye garden.

Leena Riihela (see link opposite to her website) very kindly sent me some seeds of two varieties of Japanese indigo (Persicaria (formerly Polygonum) tinctoria) and these germinated well, so I was expecting to be able to have a reasonable crop of both round-leaved and pointed-leaved plants. As you can see from the photo below, slugs and snails have attacked my poor plants. Try as I may to locate the culprits, they remain hidden until dusk, when they emerge again for a feast.

On a more positive note, for the first time, I have this year managed to grow Hedge Bedstraw, both from plants and from seed (again from Leena), although it will be several years before I can harvest any roots. The photo below shows the plants in flower.

Another plant I am growing for the first time this year is Sawwort (Serratula tinctoria). This is a native perennial yellow dye plant, thistle-like in appearance, but it was not until this year that I managed to find a source of plants. The rather poor photo below shows one of them beginning to flower. Unless the plants grow more vigorously, I will probably wait until next year before harvesting any for dyeing.

The weld plants in the photo below represent my entire crop for this year. I have only four plants, two bought as seedlings and two grown from plants overwintered from last year.

However, it is not all a tale of woe. My dyer’s chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria), dyer’s broom (Genista tinctoria) and madder (Rubia tinctorum) are all flourishing, as the photos below show. The dyer’s chamomile was grown from seed sown last year and the madder plants were brought two years ago from my old garden. The dyer’s broom was one of the first shrubs I bought for this new garden and it is a plant I love – decorative, an excellent dye source and perennial too!

The garden is gradually developing and becoming more colourful and we have also been delighted to see the Judas tree and the wisteria in flower. Another unexpected pleasure has been the discovery of a beautiful paeony flowering profusely behind the compost bin at the bottom of the garden. In any other location I would certainly not have picked the blooms but in this instance I felt justified in bringing them indoors, where we can see and fully appreciate their beauty and perfume for the few days that they will be in flower.

The pictures below show some images from the garden. The first picture shows my tiny dye garden with woad, weld, lady's bedstraw, dyer's chamomile and a very small purging buckthorn (Rhamnus catharticus) bush in the foreground. Also visible on the left is my dyer's broom bush. As the space is too small to grow many dye plants, I have limited myself to mainly native plants and those I know to be reliable in the dyepot.