Natural Dyes

Bred specifically for professional cut flower production. Carthamus tinctorius ‘Kinko’ is a special selection featuring deep orange blooms. Easy to grow from seed, flowering can be staggered by sowing successionally. It will give a host of vibrant hues throughout summer, whether in the garden or in the vase.

Carthamus tinctorius ‘Shiro’ features unusual creamy-white blooms. It makes an excellent, high quality cut flower and can also be used green when harvested young. Growing 80 to 100cm tall, flowering takes 12 to 14 weeks. It can also used for dried arrangements and is considered to be an everlasting.

The Boy Series, which all feature double flowered blooms on tall stems for garden or cutting, are available in many colours. These beauties grow well as border plants and are wonderful in a cutting garden. 'Black ball' flowers are a lovely rich dark-chocolate hue, almost black on cloudy days.

A favorite annual flower and cottage garden staple, Centaurea 'Blue Boy' has piercing, bright blue flowers with ruffled petals and violet-blue centres. The blooms appear from early to late summer. These beauties grow well as border plants and are wonderful in a cutting garden.

Cornflowers are great plants for the cutting garden or border, and this fine cultivar is no exception. Centaurea 'White Boy' is a double flowered cultivar with wonderful fluffy, white flowers on densely branched upright plants. This is the white member of the series which is also known as White Ball and Snowman

Today cornflowers are rare in the wild, they flourish instead in our gardens. They are the most splendid of annuals. Aside from their electric blue, which is breathtaking when they're grown in dense drifts, they are easy to grow, they flower all summer, make great cut flowers and bees adore them.

Clematis vitalba is the wild cousin of our many cultivated Clematis plants. This climbing shrub has fruits with long silvery grey, feathery extensions, which stay on the plant till well into the winter. The name Old man's Beard comes of course from the fact that these downy fluffy silky balls cover the plant.

Coreopsis 'Mayfield Giants’ are one the tallest and most robust of all the Coreopsis cultivars, their dazzling display of large, golden yellow daisy like flowers begins in late spring and continues throughout the summer. Very easily grown, a hardier, more beautiful flower would be difficult to find.

Dazzling gold stripes on mahogany-brown petals mark each bloom as unique on this very free-flowering, semi-double Coreopsis. Irresistible to butterflies but left alone by deer and untroubled by heat, humidity, and drought, this carefree beauty self-sows freely, going from seed to bloom in just 12 weeks.

Dazzling gold stripes on mahogany-brown petals mark each bloom as unique on this very free-flowering, semi-double Coreopsis. Irresistible to butterflies but left alone by deer and untroubled by heat, humidity, and drought, this carefree beauty self-sows freely, going from seed to bloom in just 12 weeks.

Dandelion is reviled by lawn manicurists yet, like Burdock, it is one of the most esteemed herbs in healing, the benefits are endless. The young raw leaves can be used in salads or cooked as a vegetable, the leaves contain more iron than spinach and are a excellent source of vitamins.

Iris bulleyana is a classic species Iris from western China. It belongs to a small group of oriental species which are entirely hardy and are of great value to the gardener. The plants are successful in any moist garden soil. Flowering from June to July, the blooms with mid purple flowers and dark purple veins.

Yellow Flag Iris is a common and widespread native plant in Britain. This good-looking plant is a wetland plant that is especially showy in bloom and has been transplanted into well-watered gardens all over the world.

Iris versicolor is one of the few species in garden cultivation. Although happiest at the waterside the plants will also perform well under average to moist border conditions. Flowering from May through to July, each stalk produces up to five violet-blue flowers with ruffled petals and bold purple veining.

'Kermesina' is an attractive and popular cultivar of Iris versicolor. Flowering from May through to July with claret-purple flowers with ruffled petals and bold purple veining. It may be grown in shallow standing water or moist shoreline soils and suitable to be grown in constantly moist humusy soils of a border.

Woad has been grown for its indigo-blue pigment and for its medicinal properties since the 13th century, recently capturing popular imagination as the blue dye for body paint used by the Celts. This fashionable plant has a fresh wildflower appearance that can brighten any garden.

Mugwort has been known since ancient times, with a multitude of medicinal uses. This amazing shrub is closely allied to the Artemisia absinthe and botanically related to tarragon. It has a mellow sage-like aroma. it repels insects and is employed as a natural dye and an aromatic culinary herb.

Nigella “Persian Jewels” bears delicate, old-fashioned flowers of red, rose pink, blue, deep violet-blue and white open a pale colour but mature to their intense, pure shades, each backed by a wispy, bright green ruff. Viewed from afar the flowers look as though they really are floating in a mist.

A very popular and reliable variety for well over 100 years, Onion 'Density 4' is ideally suited to our climate producing medium to large, globe shaped, straw coloured bulbs with pure white flesh and a good flavour. As a standard maincrop it offers excellent quality, high yields and a very good storage life.

Redmate is an excellent duel purpose variety of onion. It can be harvested early and eaten as a mild salad onion or left to grow. Red bulb onions are mild and the sweetest tasting of all onions and recommended to liven up the salad bowl.

'Morada de Amposta' is a large sweet onion named after the small Spanish town of Amposta. A heritage variety that produces attractive red-bronze onions, not too hot, with a pleasant, exceptional sweetness typical of Spanish onions. The beautiful, large globes weigh around 200 to 250 grams.