In spring 2024, the Learning department embarked on a new collaborative project with the Gardening team to create a Dye garden in one of the beds in our Healing Garden.
The Healing Garden, generously funded by the Tanner Trust and designed by Dan Pearson Studio, features native, medicinal and wildlife-friendly planting within a woven hazel fence. Beds for food-growing, the local community and learning projects are arranged within the garden which is in Old Paradise Gardens, a park close to the Garden Museum.
Plants traditionally used for dyeing fibre and cloth are being grown in the Dye Bed with the aim of incorporating them into Learning activities.
The project started in spring 2024 with the purchase and sowing of seeds. Some seeds were started off at Morley College, where the Head of Learning was attending a course, and some by gardeners at the museum in our greenhouse. Plants were also purchased. Planting out began in May and by July the plants were becoming well established. We had a problem with the first madder plant being eaten by slugs and snails and have had to replace it.
The Dye Bed project coincides with a display at the Garden Museum of textiles made by students from Morley College on the Seasonal Natural Dyeing and Printing course. The display runs until 8th September 2024. Morley College has a Dye Garden created in partnership with Permablitz London which supplies the textiles department with plant material.
It also coincides with an installation by artist Ian Berry using denim. Denim was dyed with indigo until the invention of synthetic dyes. We are growing Japanese Indigo ( Persicaria tinctoria “Senbon”) in the Dye Bed.
The three dye plants madder (red), woad (blue) and weld (yellow) produce the primary colours and are colour fast. They, along with indigo, were used for dyeing cloth and fibre until the adoption of synthetic dyes. There are other plants which can be used for natural dyeing too. Colours depend on which plant and which part of the plant is used – leaf, stem, flower, root, bark – as well as mordants and modifiers used.
