How to Forage and Grow the Best Plants for Natural Dyes

Sarah Gotowka operates Luna Fiber Studio in Trumansburg, New York. Here she is with one of her naturally dyed fabrics.

Dyeing fabric does not have to mean purchasing a package of chemical dye. For Sarah Gotowka, owner of Luna Fiber Studio in Trumansburg, New York, foraging for and growing plants — and then experimenting with them — helps her obtain the colors she wants. Gotowka talked about the topic of natural dye plants at this year’s Northeast Organic Farming Association New York (NOFA-NY) conference.

Gotowka grows “dye plants” at Remembrance Farm in Trumansburg, and at the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden in Brooktondale, New York. Gotowka likes diversity in culture that textiles often symbolize, “including the pigments used,” she said.

She started growing dye plants more than a decade ago, “not knowing what I was doing, but through dye plants, I fell in love with farming,” Gotowka said.

Initially, she ignored books about dyeing and “just tried the weird shrub in the corner,” she said, to see what kind of results she could get.

“There’s a reason plants ‘make’ the dye books,” Gotowka said. “They’re colorfast. These dyes will withstand repeated exposure to light and repeated washing.”

Goldenrod is easily foraged on many farms and offers yellow dye color.

She begins with pre-mordanted material, ideally upcycled and fair-trade fabric. Gotowka uses aluminum potassium sulfate to mordant the fabric and starts with wet fabric and dried plants. Most plants’ color potential is in the flower tops, she said. In general, she uses 1 pound of fresh “dye stuff” to 1 pound of fabric for lighter colors, and 3 pounds of “dye stuff” per 1 pound of fabric for deeper, more intense colors.

She said that the color she achieves relies upon the type of mordant she uses, the pH and the fiber that she dyes. The variations among even the same plants used, such as the plant’s soil and the sun exposure and rain the plant receives, can change the tint of the dye also.

“That’s one of the beautiful things about natural dyes,” Gotowka said.

Each batch remains unique.

As for the plants she uses, she both cultivates and forages for her materials. She grows coreopsis tinctoria, “a really easy plant to grow. There’s lots of different kinds of coreopsis and I think most will give color.”

“Tinctoria” is Latin for “pigment-bearing,” an appropriate name, she said.

“When you’re looking through a seed catalog, that can be signifying it’s a pigment-bearing plant,” she said.

Coreopsis tinctoria offers orange and yellow hues, as do orange and yellow cosmos. Gotowka buys pinwheel marigolds from Fruition Seeds, which can provide green colors.

Scabiosa is one of her newest editions of dye. The heads yield purples and blues. Since these colors in dye plants often degrade and fade over time, Gotowka advises freezing them rather than drying like most of the others.

In agriculture, burdock plants are a pesky weed. However, Gotowka said the plant’s “root is incredible, specifically curly dock, for really beautiful maroon browns.”

The tops of tansy provide a butter-yellow color and the leaves offer a chartreuse green, lime-green or other shade, depending on how it’s dyed, she said.

The seeds of the Hopi sunflower, originally cultivated by the Hopi people, can provide maroons or greens, depending on the dye batch’s pH.

“This is a very, very sensitive plant,” Gotowka said. “I’ll change it with the tiniest drop of baking soda or vinegar. It’ll shift color really fast.”

Madder root offer red colors, but the plant tends to “take over” where it’s planted, so Gotowka recommends growing it in a pot or raised bed to keep it contained.

“You want the plant to mature for three years” before harvesting, she added.

Black-eyed Susans are another dye plant that Sarah Gotowka uses.

Indigo (polygonum tinctorium or persicaria tinctoria) offers “the purest blue that you can get from any plant in the world, and I say that without faltering,” Gotowka said. “This plant is magic.”

She grows Japanese indigo, which she would like to have renamed Korean indigo.

“There’s a huge colonial history behind that, where during the Japanese occupation of Korea, they tried to wipe out Korean knowledge of this plant” as well as numerous other references ot Korean history, she said.

The dying process for indigo is more difficult than other plants. With most other plants, the process involves boiling the dried plants for about an hour to make a “tea” of them, removing the plant material and then adding the fabric. Indigo is more complicated, with different extraction techniques and dying processes that “are really intense,” Gotowka said.

She offers an entire workshop on just dyeing with indigo because of how challenging it can be to use.

Pink cosmos at first offers yellow, but as it is exposed to the air, “it magically turns blue in front of your face,” Gotowka said.

Sometimes, she uses a hammer to tap color from fresh flower petals onto fabric, using them more like a stamp than as ingredients for a dye bath.

As for foraging, Gotowka likes looking for ferns, which can provide green shades. And, if left in the dye bath overnight, the ferns make brown and maroon colors because of the plant’s natural iron content.

“Iron is a natural mordant,” Gotowka said. “It’s something that can help permanently band pigment to textiles, and it also is a color shifter.”

Goldenrod is not very farm-friendly, but Gotowka forages for the weed because of its yellow dye color.

Elder flower, mullein and sorrel offer colorfastness with greens and golds. Motherwort, mugwort, and St. John’s wort all provide green and maroon shades.

It’s pretty easy to find wild berries growing in hedgerows or in the wooded areas of many farms, she said. However, Gotowka said that the juicy-looking reds and purples don’t last after washing and exposure to the sun.

“Some pigments don’t permanently bind to textiles,” she said.

She finds that the reds and purple shades are very hard to find as natural dyes.

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