To dye for: the flowers of zinnias can be used to make dyes
Sometimes, the steps we are pressed to take are easy: not using peat is a no-brainer; it was not difficult to give up chemical pesticides and herbicides (although I do sometimes yearn for old-fashioned Rose Clear or an occasional spray of glyphosate); favouring pollen-rich flowers to encourage bees and butterflies is a delight. But sometimes, the demands feel like a step too far.
A visitor to the Glyndebourne gardens once wrote to me that there were far too many 'fancy flowers' in the gardens and that we should be concentrating on native plants. There is such a movement in America, but the glory of British gardens is not built on a few scrawny natives. My response was, of course, polite, but had the suggestion been made about my own garden I would have been much more blunt. Gardens are places of beauty and solace, not merely buttresses for an ailing environment.
It was against this background that one of Glyndebourne's gardeners, together with a member of the costume department, approached me with an idea to grow plants that could be used to dye textiles. My initial response was lukewarm. There are plenty of colourful fabrics to buy without dyeing our own and, secondly, I didn't want to fill the garden with the weedy plants that dyers use. I would learn that I was wrong, so wrong, on both counts.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 27, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 27, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Put some graphite in your pencil
Once used for daubing sheep, graphite went on to become as valuable as gold and wrote Keswick's place in history. Harry Pearson inhales that freshly sharpened-pencil smell
Dulce et decorum est
Michael Sandle is the Wilfred Owen of art, with his deeply felt sense of the futility of violence. John McEwen traces the career of this extraordinary artist ahead of his 88th birthday
Heaven is a place on earth
For the women of the Bloomsbury group, their country gardens were places of refuge, reflection and inspiration, as well as a means of keeping loved ones close by, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee
It's the plants, stupid
I WON my first prize for gardening when I was nine years old at prep school. My grandmother was delighted-it was she who had sent me the seeds of godetia, eschscholtzia and Virginia stock that secured my victory.
Pretty as a picture
The proliferation of honey-coloured stone cottages is part of what makes the Cotswolds so beguiling. Here, we pick some of our favourites currently on the market
How golden was my valley
These four magnificent Cotswold properties enjoy splendid views of hill and dale
The fire within
An occasionally deadly dinner-party addition, this perennial plant would become the first condiment produced by Heinz
Sweet chamomile, good times never seemed so good
Its dainty white flowers add sunshine to the garden and countryside; it will withstand drought and create a sweet-scented lawn that never needs mowing. What's not to love about chamomile
All I need is the air that I breathe
As the 250th anniversary of 'a new pure air' approaches, Cathryn Spence reflects on the 'furious free-thinker' and polymath who discovered oxygen
My art is in the garden
Monet and Turner supplied the colours, Canaletto the structure and Klimt the patterns for the Boodles National Gallery garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.