An Urban Bristol Natural Dye Garden: One Year In
About this time last year I was lugging a tonne of top soil into the newly built raised beds in my dye garden, so I thought now would be good time to update with what’s going on at the moment, and what my plans are for the year. I haven’t been gardening as much as I’d like, as I’ve had to spend a lot of time keeping my business afloat and planning for an uncertain future.
The most visually attractive area of the garden at the moment is the woad I grew last year. It has flowered and started to go to seed. It’s a biennial plant that is only really useful for producing the blue pigment in the first year, so I will let this go to seed, save the seed for next year’s planting and plant something else in that bed.
Behind the woad are some hollyhocks, again a biennial but this year they will flower. I'm hoping they will grow nice and tall, adding some height to the garden, and produce some really nice dark flowers. We don’t know what colours we will get so that will be interesting to follow!
The second taller bed is a bit of a mystery at the moment. I planted some weld seeds there in Autumn last year, but I think that's probably not coming up. The only thing that's really thriving in there at the moment is the hop plant which is gone completely bonkers! Once I’m sure the weld isn’t germinating I will spend some time in there weeding and planning what to plant in there.
Madder nearly destroyed by a digging animal!
The two lower beds are pretty much just full of weeds at the moment! The dahlias I left in the ground last year don't look like they're going to come back to life. On the advice of my mum and I’m going to try and dig those up to see if they are rescuable. The one plant that is thriving, is the dyer’s chamomile, which is great to see! Hopefully I will get multiple harvests of the sunny yellow blooms this year.
The big madder pots are doing amazingly well. As they are in their third year, they are going to be ready for harvest this year which is really exciting. I am going to attempt to take some cuttings to make new plants, as I am struggling to get seeds to germinate this year. Last week something (possibly a badger or fox) dug up one of my madder plants – enough to disturb and break off some roots, but not enough to completely destroy the plant, luckily! At least I was able to see that there was a decent red root structure underneath!
With the lockdown making seeing mum difficult, I have been planting a lot more seeds here this Spring. However, I don’t have a greenhouse so am limited to bedroom of windowsills! Last year I filled my car with seedlings kindly grown by my mum in her large south facing greenhouse, this year I will have to be a bit more self sufficient.
I’ve planted cosmos, coreopsis (seeds saved from last year), and woad, with a pretty rubbish success rate. Recently I’ve invested in a heated propagator, which has kicked start a second sowing of these, and seems to be working so far! The propagator is also incubating some Japanese indigo, fingers crossed that germinates.
My big success so far has been the marigolds and hopi sunflowers, both are new to me this year. The sunflower seeds will produce a black dye, and will also provide some lovely height and interest to my garden.
The right hand side of the garden
I’m also planning to maximise the space in the garden, and plant some dye plants into the main garden bed, which is mostly herbs and ornamentals at the moment. There is some yarrow, rhubarb and hollyhocks there at the moment, and I will add sun-loving flowers e.g. cosmos or coreopsis as it’s quite a sunny part of the garden. Filling the space should also make it less of a cat toilet…
The planting I’ve planned for this year takes into account my yield from last year. I had a lot of orange producing plants, which was fine because I love orange, but I would like to have more of a spectrum. We are planning to build a raised bed in the front garden (a tiny bit of concrete behind a wall) specifically for the blue producing plants – either woad or indigo, depending which we have more of. I will have red from madder this year, purple and black from hopi sunflowers, yellow from weld (hopefully), yarrow and hops.
These will be supplemented with foraging, which this year I plan to do a lot more of, so that I can have more year round colour. I’m very much still learning as I go with growing my own colour, and I’m very grateful for the supportive natural dye community on Instagram for sharing tips and techniques for growing, as well as advice from my mum via Zoom.
I plan to write an update every month or so - I’ll report back in June to let you know what’s growing!