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Friday, 10 May 2019

A Dye Gardener's View of Malvern Flower Show


I strode up and down the patio picking pots up and putting them down again, not sure which plant to put where, undecided what border to sort out first.
"Flower Shows are so packed with inspiration, I always come home with my creative juices in full flood." I clasped a small helianthemum to my chest. "You know that show garden we saw, the Malvern Telectroscope? Just imagine how brilliant it would be if I built something like that next to our front door."
My companion, Elinor Gotland, looked at me and sipped her tea.
"All those creative juices just washed a dead horse downstream. A Telectroscope here - himself would have a fit."
"Maybe just a small periscope sticking up out of the lawn, as if a submarine were about to surface?"
"Wouldn't it be a 'subterrine'? A lurking paté de fois gras, perhaps? Why don't you stop crushing that poor plant and find it a place in the sun."




The opening day of the RHS Malvern Spring Festival may have been damp and grey, but it fizzed with ideas. As well as the Show Gardens, there were five Green Living Spaces, all of them joint projects between interior designers and garden designers.
"Wouldn't you have loved to have one of those studio gardens, Elinor? I can just imagine you lounging artistically on the divan inside that one with the cob wall."
"Looked like a shipping container left next to a pile of mud and bones."
"Oh, don't be so mouldy, upcycling an old container is good for the planet. I loved it, everything within that space was natural, sustainable and handmade, lush textures of wool and linen, wood and glass. Even the planting had a soft palette."
"Soft palette? That garden was lisping for the lack of a palette, it could ask for tea but heaven help its plosive consonants if it fancied a bit of cake."
My companion wasn't entirely wrong. That Green Living Space would have sprung to life if the designers had added just a couple of textiles woven with bright, plant dyed yarn.
"People don't always appreciate that natural colours can be vivid and varied. Plant dyes are still pretty niche. Still, reasons to be cheerful, now Monty Don has started growing dye plants on Gardener's World, I bet they'll get a much higher profile."
"What's he planted then, Beaut?"
"Madder, so there'll be alizarin scarlet. Only he put his plant in the border, not a tub, so I'm worried the roots might rot like my first plants did when we had a wet winter. There was a woad plant, only since it's ready to flower, he'll have to save seeds ready to grow lots next year. Otherwise, I think he had hollyhocks, marigolds and St John's Wort."
"Oh good grief, what a plonker."
"Don't you call Monty names, he's my personal hero."
"This summer, your hero is going to show the world some sadly fugitive colours. Hollyhocks and marigolds won't set the nation alight. Feeble and ephemeral. He'd better save half his St John's wort to make a tincture to cheer him up when all his Fair Isle knitting fades to beige."




I dug a hole and firmed the heliathemum in.
"I suppose you could be right, Elinor. Monty Don does need some proper dye plants. Weld, coreopsis tinctoria, anything with 'tinctoria' in the name."
"Well, he won't find them at Malvern Show. All those hundreds of trade stands we went round, thousands of plants and not a decent dye among them."
"That's not quite true. I did see one Dyer's Chamomile plant."
"The exception that proves the rule and I bet Monty won't find it."
"One day, Elinor, dye plants will cover the front of the displays, people will demand them because they are so beautiful, fascinating and useful."

I finished weeding the herb border, placed a few more of my new plants in the spaces and stood back to consider the effect.
"We had a grand day out at Malvern. I was pleased to buy old favourites like this sage and thyme, but much more excited to pick up six kinds of chilli and talk to the nursery owners about conditions for growing sorrel and old school herbs you'd hardly ever have seen on sale in the past. Tastes change, things get rediscovered and growers and suppliers respond. Dye plants won't be forever hidden in the farthest corners of the RHS Plant Finder. One day, there'll be whole trays of Dyers Chamomile and shelves full of Japanese Indigo at every flower show." 
Elinor finished her tea and dusted the biscuit crumbs off her front.
"And one day, Beaut, you too shall have your own Telectroscope."



9 comments:

  1. Exactly my thoughts about Monty's dye garden. And when Rachel de Thame said she'd bring 'some fabric' to dye when they got round to using it, my heart just sank...

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    1. Perhaps the fabric will be wool or silk and with a bit of luck, they won't neglect to use a mordant. Monty is an educated bloke, if alum was good enough for Pliny the Elder, it should be good enough for him. OK, OK, I know, it'll probably be unmordanted cotton and it won't so much be dyed as faintly discoloured and we'll all agree it's awfully ecofriendly and privately decide it looks shit ...

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  2. Ha! Great post, great comments/ reply! I would love to grow some dye plants ' do you have book recommendations
    or your own recommendations (in addition to those mentioned in your post)? They'd have to be low maintenance as I'm not a committed gardener and don't have much free time. Can all marigold varieties be used? Thanks :)

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    1. I'd recommend Jenny Dean's book Wild Colour as a great starting point. My own experience with pot marigolds has been disappointing, very pale wan colours, but I'm told the African marigolds and tagates dye much better. For low maintenance plants that come back year after year, I'd recommend Dyers Chamomile aka Anthemis tinctoria, for annuals that are easy care, you'll probably find various species of coreopsis in the garden centres.
      Very best of luck :)

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    2. Thanks, I've been looking st getting that book so glad to hear that you think it's a good starter book. Shame about the marigolds being a bit crap though - I've got stacks of them!

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    3. Just because i didn't get much out of them doesn't mean pot marigolds are no use, there may be a technique for extracting optimal colour - I can only say a standard dye bath didn't produce much for me and nor did tweaking the pH. Jenny Dean has them in her book shown as giving pale yellow with an alum mordant and an equal weight of dye stuff to fibres. She says to leave materials in the pot overnight, which I did do, maybe I should have been satisfied with what I got.

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  3. Oh no! I've been excited about planting marigolds this year for dyeing purposes, and I just picked up some hollyhock dye stuff from my local fiber fair. Oh Elinor, why do you have to tell me the harsh truth?

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    1. I shouldn't be so dismissive of pale colours - see my reply above. With the hollyhocks, you can have a fascinating time. Once you have dyed some fibres, try soaking some in lemon juice for acid modification and some in a solution of baking powder or washing powder for alkali modification. It is amazing how the colours change before your eyes. The thing with the mutable colours is that they are unstable and washing finished knitwear can spoil all your colourwork ... ask me how I know ...

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