Dye Garden in summer (and going down with crash!)

The Dye garden has n ever looked so good and many of the dye plants are now in flower.

Saffloweer Carthamus tinctoria just opening leaning against Hopi Red dye Amaranthus whatsit-must ask Enys for the correct Latin name as it is in none of my dye books, ( she has the one on North American Dye plants) . Behind it is Cosmos and the green is Persicaria tinctoria
Vipers Bugloss -Echium vulgare. It is a huge attractor for bees and so I managed to get one with a bee on it . This is a member of the Boriganacae family many of which give purple or blues with the roots. Someone on Natural Dyes Online mentioned a couple of years ago that they had got blue from the root. This is why we grow it ostensibly but really because Enys adores it and because it attracts bees. ( And I love it too) I haven't tried it yet. Why? Because you have to dig it up and although I always tell visitors to the garden that Enys won't let me dig it up really I couldn't bear too either. It is such a fabulous blue too.
In front the Vipers bugloss, behind Genista tinctora just opening ,with common yarrow Achilleia millifolium in full flower. You can't really see it but the Staghorn Sumach Rhus typhina is in full flower. I have never seen so many on it before and I wonder whether the flowers give any colour. Has anyone tried them?

Behind the bears is dyers chamomile Anthemis tinctoria , which is what the children will use when the BBC come to film a children's science programme in a couple of weeks. It is called Nina and the Neurones.
And the crash
A Chest infection -out of the blue not preceded by anything but an itchy cough which I put down to hay fever . So now I am on massive doses of steroids to keep my lung function from dropping to hospital admission level and antibiotics. The trouble with the steroids is that make you disinclined to sleep and to want to eat and eat and eat because you never feel full. OH woe!
Still the dye garden is lovely and DH loves doing the routine jobs like weeding and watering. And my poor student who was coming on Monday has had to pull out because of an injury to her wrist so in some ways it is all panning out. We are hoping she can rebook when she starts to recover.
I am going to have to slow down! sigh.
I keep forgetting to welcome new followers. So welcome lovely to have you all. Please do drop by and leave a note. I love getting them.

Addition to the Dye Garden Ascelpius Tuberosa Butterfly MilkWeed

Posted by Helen
We have a number of additions to the Dye Garden lately, Asclepius Tuberosa or Butterfly milkweed is the latest and the one of which Enys is most proud as she has nurtured it and overwintered it and here it is in flower. This plant is a member of the Asclepiadaceae or milkweed family although it does not have a milky sap. It is a native of North America found in sandy loamy or calcerous soils of prairies and open woods and is a dye plant producing a range of yellows golds and light bright olives depending on mordant but we are also interested in it as it attracts butterflies which fill our other criteria forthe garden -that it is a garden for the wildlife. It was also used by Native Americans and early settlers for the treatmentof lung complaints-so defintely a good one for me to have- and it was at one time called pleurisy root. It was also used as analgesic, laxative, dermatological and gynacological aid
All this information about it comes from Dyes from American Native Plants A Practical Guide by Lynne Richards and Ronald J Tyrl published by Timber Press Inc ISBN 0-88192-688-X , which Enys brought back from the US a couple of years ago.

Dye Plants in Flower at the moment also include: Viper Bugloss in the picture below, supposed to give purple with roots-yet another one Imust try!


Iris Pseudocorus supposed to give black with the root but not by me


Cosmos Sulphureus flowers give yellows

Weld Reseda Luteola-this year we have had a a lotof weld but it is all self seeded and this large plant was at the edge of a a bed dug at the beginning of the growing season last year -it set a florette last year and this year has just grown and grown.This of course gives a bright lightfast acid yellow which with ammonia is almost florescent

Here is our u shaped foxglove it had fallen over got propped up again and this is the result.

and finally -the principal reason why Enys put mullein Verbascum Thapsus in the garden -it is the only place for the mullein moth, Cucullia verbasci, and here are the happy caterpillars


Jill Goodwin in a Dyers Manual says with copper sulphate this gives a good green but it is one of those plants I have yet to get round to trying.

Cosmos

Here are the results of dyeing with cosmos from my garden .

I picked 300g of flower heads, covered with tap water in my traditional style slow cooker and left this on overnight. The advantage of this slow cooker is that unlike the more modern electric casserole it does not reach boiling but heats to between 80 & 90 degrees C and can therefore be left on overnight without too much fear that the studio will burn down and the colour will be spoiled by boiling. I allowed ( this really means that I was to busy to do anything with it ) it to cool, when the bath was red and then dumped in what I had left in my mordant pot which turned out to mixed fibres of silk laps, Lesley Prior 's Bowmont, teeswater fleece and some 18.5 micron merino. These had been mordanted in 8% alum, 7%cream of tartar and I left them to heat gently for about 24 hours before removing. This morning when I came to check, the dye bath was a soft yellowy green which for some reason does not show up well in the photos. I made samples as follows. I remove about a 100ml - (this is quite approximate incidentally)- of liquid and added to it appropriate chemicals as follows. A small glug of ammonia ( about 5ml) ), a 1/16 teaspoon of stannous chloride , the same plus ammonia, 1/16 of copper sulphate and the same plus ammonia , 1/16th teaspoon of ferrous sulphate and the same plus ammonia. I then gave these a minute in the microwave to provide some gentle heat, remove the fibres rinsed and labelled. The ammonia turned the dye bath a deep gold so I added a glug to the main bath and took a photo after about half an hour of gentle heat.

I probably dyed about 100-150g of fibres but I will check tomorrow when they are dry. I have not obviously done light fastness tests yet but according to John and Margaret Cannon -Dye Plants and Dyeing published by Kew Garden, cosmos sulphurous (my cosmos is in the same genus), is in the same dye group as coreopsis tinctoria and dahlia. Originally they came from Mexico and were used by the Aztecs before the Spanish invaded Central America. I first grew these plants because my mother in the last few years of her life grew them and they reminded me of her. Enys and I think I brought a packet of seeds and handed them to her but we both have been very pleased with them. They obviously have enjoyed the wet summer which is surprising as my mother lived in dry Surrey but they have been fantastic this year. So another dye plant which , like dyers chamonile, coreopsis tinctoria , lythrum salicaria and to a lesser degree genista tinctoria, is both beautiful and useful. The picked plants are already flowering again so will no doubt go in giving pleasure till the frosts come.