Natural Dye Garden

You can create a wonderful natural dye garden on a balcony even if you don’t have a garden or access to a community garden space.  In this blog post, I’ll share the set-up and updates of my natural dye garden, which I started on the balcony of our new apartment earlier this year alongside an allocated garden space. The microclimate of a balcony garden differs from that of the ground. Consider the following factors before starting a balcony garden: space,…

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Two weeks ago, I went to tend my allocated garden plot to transplant saplings of dye plants into the Earth. The field was readied for gardening five weeks ago, but what awaited me was a jungle of weeds instead of a prepped garden plot. The rainy weather a week prior helped the seeds hidden in the soil, patiently waiting for the ideal conditions to sprout. All of the efforts to prepare the garden bed had been for nought. Lesson learned…

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For long as I can remember, I have always wished to have a small garden patch where I could grow my own food and botanical colors for my creative practice. Even though I have previously grown food on a balcony, this is the first time I am growing natural dye plants for making lake pigments. I’ll share my methods, challenges and learnings in growing natural dye plants in the blog series “What’s happening in my Dye Garden”! Cultivating plants and…

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