Where do I even begin? The excitement and rush of curiosity I get when I consider natural dyes is beyond me to describe! This week has seen the arrival of 2 out of 3 natural dye books that I have ordered, and today when India Flint’s book Eco Colour arrived, my desire to immerse myself in this world of natural colour is almost overwhelming.

Sadly it is not to be for a few weeks I imagine as I have other work that must be attended to first, but this is good in a way as it will allow me to really centre my thoughts on what I want to achieve with natural dyes, and where I want to begin. I will also have time to thoroughly devour this book. Look at these pictures! Amazing!

Speaking of beginning, I have been surveying my overgrown grass filled garden beds (previous tenants damn you!!) and have chosen this spot for my dye garden. You can see (below) that I’ve tried to kill off some of the grass and then just stopped. Well that is because a family of not so friendly European wasps is living next to that very last spindly gum tree on the right, so I am waiting for them to die in the cold weather before i destroy their nest and search out their eggs for destruction. This sounds very calculated and evil of me I know, but well, I don’t like wasps. They seem to be quite prolific around the suburb I live in too, and I’d like to at the very least partially eliminate them from my yard.

Then I will have to clear most of the grass before I prep the bed lasagna style for planting in spring. It frustrates me immensely that I have begun to take an interest in growing my own dyes right smack bang at the wrong time of the year!

Rita Buchanen’s book is also very interesting and is more gardening focused, I think I will rely on it quite a bit when I am planting. It’s already helped me choose my garden location, since most of the things I am planning on planting require full sun.

The biggest plus to the position of my dye garden is that just to the left of it (out of frame) lies the windows of my studio and a door straight onto the garden. So when I am actually working inside I will be able to look out at all that I have grown. What a feeling that will be.