Theatre uses its secret garden for costume dye

Squint at the roof of the grey, brutalist National Theatre on London's South Bank and you may spy a riot of colour spilling from the concrete.

- Helena Horton

This is the theatre's new natural dye garden, from which flowers are being picked to create the colours for the costumes worn in its plays.

Chemical dyes are often toxic for the environment and bad for human health, so the theatre's costume designers are experimenting with using flowers including indigo, dahlias, hollyhocks, chamomile and wild fennel to create the vivid colours used in their productions.

Liz Honeybone, the head textile artist, is buzzing with excitement about the opportunities the garden is bringing. "It's a sort of secret garden," she said. "You walk in and suddenly there is this burst of yellows and golds and black flowers."