Juliet Sargeant's Naturally Dyed Garden
Juliet Sargeant, the award winning garden designer has been visiting Renaissance Dyeing with a camera crew from the BBC's Gardener's World.
After visiting my non-award winning garden and looking at the madder and woad plants there, Juliet had a go at naturally dyeing with woad, one of the plants that will be growing in her natural dye garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show.
Producer Richard Holmes and researcher Simon Rice are zooming around the garden exhibitors filming for their special Hampton Court Flower Show edition of Gardener's World which will be broadcast on Friday July 10th
They expertly coaxed the words out of my tongue-tied self as we explored the magic of woad dyeing.
Juliet's exhibit is a natural dye garden, a sense stimulating blend of natural dye plants, trees, shrubs and flowers presenting us with the colours and moods of summer. The 15 shades of naturally dyed silks in the garden will carry these silky hues on into winter when nature's petals have long since tumbled back to the earth. As well as woad, madder, weld, onion skins and cochineal were used to dye the silks
It was a special poignant moment for me to have Juliet and her silks together at our humble Lieurac drying line and I am looking forward to seeing the silks hanging in the garden when I visit.
You can see Juliet's natural dye garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show 2009 from July 7th -12th 2009.