Botanical Guide

For Wear the Garden, you’re welcome to bring leaves, flowers, herbs, or other meaningful botanicals from your garden to experiment with during the solar dye process. Bringing your own plants is completely optional, but meaningful botanicals can make your garment especially personal.

What to Bring

Garments: Natural fibers only, cotton, linen, hemp, silk, rayon, etc. White, cream, beige, tan, or other light-colored garments work best. Light- to medium-blue natural-fiber demin can also create beautiful results.

Please avoid synthetic fabrics such as polyester, nylon, and acrylic. They will not dye.

Botanicals:

Fresh or dried materials are welcome. We can rehydrate dried plants.

I recommend 10-15 leaves, flowers, or clippings but it’s completely optional.

Some plants that often produce beautiful results include:

• Maple leaves, especially Red Maple

• Oak leaves and ferns

• coneflower-shaped flowers

• Ivy, mugwort, and goldenrod

• Parsley and other herbs

• Interesting, deeply divided, pinnatifid leaves

The process is highly experimental, so bring anything intriguing especially something meaningful to you. Unexpected plants often create the most beautiful results.

I'll also have plenty of botanicals available, so you don't need to bring anything to fully participate.

Preparing Your Botanicals

If you’d like to press flowers or leaves before class:

Place them between two sheets of parchment paper (or plain paper). Slip the paper inside a heavy book. I love using old dictionaries or if you can find them - phone books! Add a few extra books on top for gentle pressure. Leave them overnight, or if you’re short on time a few hours