Natural Dye Colours from Common Garden Plants

Why Dye From the Garden?

There is a particular pleasure in walking out to the garden with a bowl and coming back with a dye bath. Onion skins from the kitchen bin, marigolds past their best, a patch of nettles behind the shed, the stones left over from making guacamole: all of them will give colour on wool, silk, cotton and linen. The results are softer and more changeable than anything from a packet, and they shift with the water, the season and the fibre you use.

Most plant dyes need a little help to stay put. Without a mordant, a bond between dye and fibre, colours will fade in sunlight within a few weeks. With one, they can last for years. The good news is that the two or three ingredients you need are cheap, easy to store and simple to use.

Preparing Fibre and Mordanting

Start by scouring: wash your yarn or cloth thoroughly in hot water with a little pH-neutral soap or soda crystals to remove oils, sizing and grease. Rinse well. Dye cannot penetrate a dirty fibre.

For animal fibres such as wool and silk, mordant with alum at roughly 10 to 15 per cent of the weight of the fibre (WOF), plus a teaspoon of cream of tartar per 100g. Dissolve the alum in hot water, add it to a pot with enough water to let the fibre move freely, then hold at around 80°C for an hour. Let it cool overnight in the bath.

Plant fibres such as cotton and linen need more persuasion. Treat them first with a tannin bath, strong black tea or oak gall solution works well, then mordant with alum. Use a dedicated dye pot, never one you cook in, and keep a notebook. Notes on weight, mordant, temperature and timing are the only way to repeat a colour you love.

UK tap water is often hard, which dulls plant dyes. Rainwater collected in a butt gives noticeably clearer, brighter results. Failing that, a splash of vinegar in the dye bath helps.

Onion Skins: Golden Yellows and Warm Amber

The papery skins you peel off everyday onions are one of the most reliable dyes in the kitchen. Yellow and brown skins give a deep golden amber; red skins lean towards olive and brass.

• Collect skins until you have roughly the same weight as your fibre (100 per cent WOF).
• Simmer the skins in water for 40 minutes, then strain them out.
• Add wetted, mordanted fibre and hold at 80°C for 45 to 60 minutes, stirring gently.
• Leave to cool in the bath, ideally overnight, for a richer shade.

Onion skins will dye unmordanted wool perfectly well, but alum makes the colour markedly more lightfast. A short dip in an iron after-bath will turn gold to a soft khaki green, which is lovely on hand-knitted mittens.

Marigolds and Nettles: Bright Golds and Soft Greens

Marigolds are generous. Deadhead them through the summer, dry the petals on a tray, and by autumn you will have a jarful. Use 30 to 50 per cent WOF of dried petals, simmer for 30 minutes, strain, then dye alum-mordanted fibre for an hour. The result is a clear, sunny yellow. Add a pinch of washing soda to the bath to push it towards a deeper gold.

Nettles give the soft, greyish green that feels most like an English hedgerow. Pick the top four leaves in spring, before the plants set seed, wearing gloves. Simmer 100 per cent WOF of fresh leaves for an hour, strain, and dye as above. On their own they give a pale, tender green; a brief dip in iron water after dyeing turns them sage and olive.

To make iron water, soak a handful of rusty nails in a jar of vinegar and water for a week. Dilute a tablespoon into a bucket of water, dip the fibre for two to five minutes, then rinse thoroughly. Iron darkens colour but can make fibre brittle, so use it sparingly.

Avocado Stones: Dusky Pinks and Blush

Save your avocado stones in the freezer until you have eight or ten, then chop them roughly. Simmer for an hour, strain, and you have a bath that gives the most surprising colour of all.

• On alum-mordanted wool and silk, fresh stones give a warm dusky pink, like faded rose print.
• Dried stones give a softer, dustier blush with more brown in it.
• Adding a little washing soda to the bath brings out the pink; vinegar pushes it back towards tan.

Cotton takes the colour more reluctantly and will read as a pale, milky beige-pink. Leave the fibre in the cooling bath overnight for depth, and expect the shade to settle slightly lighter once dry.

Shibori: Pattern Before Colour

Shibori is simply resist dyeing, and it suits these gentle colours beautifully. Wet your cloth evenly and wring it out before you bind, so the dye travels evenly through the folds.

• Itajime: fold cloth into a square or triangle and clamp it between two wooden blocks or lolly sticks with elastic bands. You get crisp geometric repeats.
• Kanoko: pinch small points of cloth and bind tightly with thread for a field of dotted circles.
• Arashi: wrap cloth diagonally around a pipe or pole, secure with string, and push the fabric down to create fine diagonal stripes.
• Nui: run a simple running stitch, pull it tight and knot it for drawn, leaf-like lines.

The tighter the binding, the sharper the pattern. Rinse the bundle briefly in cool water before you unbind it, then wash the finished piece gently in cool water and dry it in the shade. Keep a record of every bath in your notebook, along with a snip of the dyed fibre, and within a season you will have a garden of colours you can return to again and again.