Dyer’s Gardens are intended for growing herbs and plants traditionally harvested to be used in producing dye supplies to color wool, cotton and silk fibres, fabrics and crafts. The problem in growing this type of garden is that you will generally need a lot of one particular dye plant to make just a little dye. For this reason most dye gardens look mostly like cut-flower gardens. It is a lot of fun deciding what plants to use.

The design and planting is very simple, strait rows of specific dye plants and a walkway running in between each row for easy access. Rather than planting large dye gardens of their own many gardeners will concentrate on 3 to 4 dye plants and look for wild plants as source of material easily gathered from sunny meadows such as goldenrod for a source of yellow dye.

A dyer’s garden is a place where nature, dye plants, time and human history meet. Relatively large plots are necessary to produce the amount of material required for a practically usable amount of dye. The interesting part is in knowing the right formula for each batch of fiber since the amount of plant dye, mordant (color fixer) and amount of fiber will differ according to the type of dye plants available. Plant a dyer’s garden with a collection of herbs and plants such as Bloodroot to dye reds, pinks and orange colors. Burdock; for a yellow dye. Hollyhocks blossoms to get pinks, red, mauve and tan colors.

Dyer’s garden

visit my other sites