Craftspeople From a remote Devon

From a remote Devon valley, Flora Arbuthnott has combined creativity with a love of nature, to teach the technique of botanical dyeing, obtaining rich hues from foraged and home-grown plants

WORDS VIVIENNE HAMBLY PHOTOGRAPHS MIMI CONNOLLY

Flora Arbuthnott, preparing cosmos flowers to extract their dye, at her studio in rural Devon.

Most crafts are about the coming together of art with science, and rationality with mystery, and there’s a certain point where it’s nice to let go and see what happens.” So says botanical dyer Flora Arbuthnott, who lives and works in a quiet, rural valley near Totnes in Devon. It took Flora some time to settle into this dualism, but now she has come to see how it permeates almost everything in her life.

Art and craft are in Flora’s blood. Her mother, Vanessa, is the popular textile designer whose eponymous line of fabrics reflects the joys of rural life. Her father is an architect and stone carver, and her sister is a painter. Two brothers “are in more conventional jobs” she adds. Growing up in the

Above Botanical dyeing combines Flora’s creativity with a desire to be immersed in nature. Above right Colours have almost infinite variety, depending on the qualities of the dye. Cotswolds meant nature was integral to Flora’s life, but with her talents it seemed an obvious enough decision to study at the Glasgow College of Art. But there was a snag: something that should have been so right in fact wasn’t right. “I struggled at Glasgow but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then I realised what I’d been missing: I’d lost my connection with nature,” Flora recalls. “I grew up in the countryside surrounded by plants. I had always had a relationship with them. Then I did a two-week permaculture course that blew my mind. I chose to find meaning in the natural world.” So began a path of personal discovery. She finished her course at Glasgow and then did a stint in service design. “It was never going to work for me,” she says matter-of-factly. Returning to the familiar surrounds of her mother’s studio in the Cotswolds provided her with space for reflection. “I did lots of textile design, print-making and teaching print-making, things I was very confident with, but in the end I stumbled across natural dyeing. I’d never heard of it, but I realised it brought together my design background and my interest in plants. It really made sense.”

Humans have been colouring materials for thousands of years, and the path of the dye indigo, in particular, spans continents and millennia. In this country, botanical dyes are keenly associated with wool in a reflection of past economies. Scottish tweeds and tartans were dyed with lichen, leaves, berries, roots and bark, allowing families a form of self-expression, as Jean Fraser points out in Traditional Scottish Dyes (Canongate). Influenced by the mineral content of the water, colours would vary even from glen to glen. In the age of the bright,

stable, cost-eective but ultimately flat synthetic dyes that emerged in the 1800s, botanical dyeing is an anomaly. Yet a contemporary yearning to reconnect with nature – itself a response to climate change and technology – has given botanical dyeing fresh popularity among a band of young artists, growers and foragers.

In summer, Flora gathers cosmos and coreopsis from her studio garden near Ashprington on the banks of the River Dart, to simmer in a pot on the stove. Most dyes are water-soluble and can be extracted from plants in a tea. Flora soaks them – flowers, or stems and leaves or both – in a small amount of water, then strains them and repeats the process with the same material to take out all the colour. “Coreopsis is an old favourite that I grow every year,” she says. “Dahlias aren’t particularly stable, but they give such interesting colours. I use dyer’s chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria), which has completely yellow flowers; tagetes marigolds give greens and mustard colours. Then there’s madder for red, woad, which is so prolific here, for blue, weld, which is a reliable source of yellow…”

Some plants she grows herself, others she gathers from her surroundings. There is a certain pressure to harvest flowers at their peak, which may last only a week or two, and to obtain enough material to last for a year to come. Some flowers she’ll dry; others work best fresh and will be extracted right away. “I have in my head a calendar of what plants I like to work with and when they are in season for harvest. Meadowsweet is only out for a short time in July, so I dry it out and jar it. Drying is a preservation

Above Cosmos is one of Flora’s favourite plants for dye-extraction. Below left Many of the plants Flora harvests are dried ready to be used in future years. Below middle Bright yellow dyer’s chamomile, Anthemis tinctoria . Below right Flora keeps a record of the shades that dye and mordant combinations produce so she can repeat them easily in future. process: 100g dried is much more than 100g fresh,” she notes, adding that it is easier to be more precise with quantities of dried material than fresh, since the water content of fresh plants is so variable.

In all this, there is endless opportunity for experimentation and exploration. Each plant oers varying depth of colour depending on the strength of the dye, obviously, but botanical dyes don’t work well on their own. They also need a mordant to fix them to the material at hand, and mordants combined with dyes oer realms of possibility. Mordants are elemental substances that strengthen the bond between the dye and the fabric, making it

colour-fast. They include aluminium sulphate, iron, chrome, zinc and copper. Fabric must be soaked in these before it can be dyed; the mordant attaches to the fabric, and the dye attaches to the mordant. But dyes themselves also react to the mordant, and so dierent mordants bring dierent colours. Add light-fastness to this and the material that is to be coloured, and the near-infinite number of hues and shades that can be achieved becomes apparent. “It can be a bit overwhelming because there are so many dierent elements,” Flora explains. “Everything is interconnected and there is a chain reaction between all the dierent elements in the process.”

Top For colour-fastness, fabric must be soaked in a mordant before it is dyed. Flora continues to evaluate light fastness. Above left The magic of dyeing fabric is seeing what the result will be. Above right Dierent techniques achieve dierent patterns.

While Flora appreciates the value of the skills she learned at Glasgow, she has sought out individuals to guide her on specific topics. Michel Garcia has been influential in dyeing practice, while Ffyona Campbell has helped with foraging skills and plant knowledge. For a time, Flora sold dyed products – drawings, prints and patterns – but this meant she was always focused on an end result, when she far prefers the process. Workshops and classes were the answer.

Then came 2020 and the opportunity to gather in groups fell away. Her solution has been to start teaching online and this has been very successful. From her remote valley, where mobile signal is limited, she now teaches dyers around the world. “It makes so much sense, mainly because it’s easier for them to get on with it at home. I reach people in the Hebrides, Ireland, Canada – places where going to a workshop is not really possible,” she explains. “There’s so much narrative around online tech disconnecting us from nature, but it also brings us together. It’s been really inspiring to be part of that.”

Along with this, and the opportunity to tidy her studio and catalogue endless colour palettes, there has been time for reflection. “I have a lot of ideas and outward energy but I’m really learning that this needs to be balanced with a more inward process. This year has been fantastic for that,” she notes. Q

A selection of the best writing on the shelves this month

Palace of Palms by Kate Teltscher Picador, £25

To walk into the Palm House at RBG Kew on a winter day is to be instantly transported to warmer, tropical climes. The smell of plants so dierent from our own and the humidity and the warmth are as much a pleasure as seeing the palms themselves.

Described in 1853 by the Illustrated London Almanack as ‘without question the most elegant building of its kind in extant’, the Palm House was built between 1844 and 1848 by William Turner to designs by Decimus Burton. On completion, filled with plants sent to Kew by plant hunterexplorers, it represented the acme of British colonial power and industrial development. Today, with climate change and conservation foremost in horticulturists’ minds, it points to threatened rainforests and critical conservation work around the globe. Ironically, as Kate Teltscher points out, much of the latter is a response to the trajectory started by the former. For example, palm oil production, once a lucrative alternative to the slave trade, is now directly responsible for the destruction of rainforests.

In Palace of Palms, Kate Teltscher skilfully distils the historical facts of the creation of the Palm House into a piece of storytelling that is dicult to put down. Here appear the monarchs and maverick men awakened by lands unknown to them, and driven by money, ego and passion for new science. Through it all is the absolute focus of Kew’s first director, William Hooker, on establishing a centre of horticultural excellence. His legacy enriches us all.

Botanical Art Techniques Edited by Carol Woodin and Robin A. Jess Timber Press, £30

Botanical art is so often a source of marvel: the detail, the exacting scale, and just the right colour and texture, whether it’s a persimmon’s bloom or an oak leaf’s decay. We may not all be dedicated enough to join a florilegium society, but there is nothing to stop us dabbling with what grows in our gardens. For aspiring botanical artists, this comprehensive work covers the gamut of techniques, from introductory notes on holding a pencil and shading a sphere, to a step-by-step guide to sketching a chrysanthemum or tulip, and working with egg tempura or painting on vellum. Clear, numbered illustrations make projects easy to follow and thoughts on composition, scale and using colour will take students from beginner to expert. American Gardens by Monty Don and Derry Moore Prestel, £35

Two veterans with a passion for gardens take three journeys through the United States to visit their favourite properties. Monty Don and consummate photographer Derry Moore present their findings in this sumptuous coee-table book.

The Special Relationship between the UK and the US may wax and wane, but there has always been a sharing of ideas between British and American gardeners and designers, from Beatrix Farrand and Gertrude Jekyll, to Erin Benzakein and Sarah Raven. This work reflects the exchange of such ideas, featuring properties like Dumbarton Oaks and Monticello. It also highlights contemporary US designs oering inspiration on a grand American scale, as with the Lurie Garden in Illinois, and the Desert Botanical Garden in Arizona.

In his new book, Tokachi Millennium Forest, written with Midori Shintani, Dan Pearson considers the scope of this sustainable project and the philosophies it encompasses

The Millennium Forest was established as a reserve for wildlife and landscape, with the intention that it would be sustainable for 1,000 years. It is an ecological park of 400 acres, with naturalistic gardens and landscape at its core, and its land is gently managed for biodiversity, giving way to protected wild forest.

It was important to see the landscape in all seasons and to learn how the impact of man has influenced the existing woodland so that we could oer a measured response in addressing the balance. The big idea to make the park sustainable for 1,000 years has been underpinned by the integration of intimate places that help people to engage with the experience. The plans must work with both the big and the more intimate scale, so the borrowed view was very important but the detail of the immediate foreground was always there to ‘ground’ the visitor.

The species roses such as R. spinosissima , R. glauca and R. gallica have been robust in the Hokkaido climate and do not need protection. Cephalaria gigantea has been a great success, growing to around twice the usual height we are used to in Europe. It is an example of one of the many non-native perennials that do well here given the cool nights, the damp summers and a certain period of winter under a protective eiderdown of snow.

There are many ways of seeing in Japan that have influenced my work, such as wabi-sabi, the appreciation of imperfection, but the discipline of satoyama is particularly relevant at The Millennium Forest. The practice involves working closely with your environment to take only what you need from it, tending more intensively near the homestead and progressively less so as domestic places give way to the wilder land. It is a way of being in the landscape that is reverential to natural cycles and orders and includes foraging for food and building materials and living with nature rather than dominating it.

The spring for its fast and joyful awakening after six months of winter, and autumn for the reverse: snow high in the mountain and chill winds that remind you that the growing season is one that has to be savoured for its bounty and brevity.

How to Rake Leaves (Stone Bridge Press); How to Take a Japanese Bath (Stone Bridge Press); Undesigning the Bath (Stone Bridge Press); WabiSabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (Imperfect Publishing); Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts (Imperfect Publishing); and In Praise of Shadows (Vintage Classics). Q Tokachi Millennium Forest by Dan Pearson and Midori Shintani Filbert Press, £40

Weasdale Nurseries have been growing hardy trees and shrubs on our site at 850ft elevation in the Howgill Fells, at the heart of beautiful Cumbria, since 1950. Specialising in mail order from the outset, our careful packaging system has become legendary and guarantees safe arrival of the delicate contents anywhere in the UK. Contact us for your free copy of our highly readable, illustrated catalogue, listing over 900 different plants available from November to April. EG10/20.

Tel: 015396 23246 sales@weasdale.com | www.weasdale.com Newbiggin on Lune, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria CA17 4LX

Winner of Historic Houses Garden of the Year 2018, this timeless garden, with spectacular views over parkland and the rolling Cotswold hills beyond, was created in the 17th century and retains a sense of peace and tranquility. There are extensive yew hedges, including a notable topiary yew walk designed by Lutyens as well as carefully planted mixed borders, containing a wide range of roses, clematis and herbaceous plants. The garden is a preserved, hidden gem in the heart of the Cotswolds. OPEN: Please visit www.miserden.org for details.

Tel: 01285 821303 gardens@miserden.org | www.miserden.org Miserden, Near Stroud, Gloucestershire GL6 7JA

While Jekyll’s ‘vibrating’ summer colours continue well into October, notes of autumn arrive in earnest now, including stunning crimson vines on the Pergola. Myriad trees transform into warm browns and oranges outside Lutyens’ charming Orangery, and sweep across the large Georgian Landscape Garden designed by prolific artist Coplestone Warre Bampfylde. Certainly worth an early autumn trip, and easily accessible from the M5 (J25). OPEN: Weds to Sun, 10am to 6pm (last entry 3.30pm). Essential to pre-book admission online by 5pm the day before your visit.

Tel: 01823 413923 info@hestercombe.com | www.hestercombe.com Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton, Somerset TA2 8LQ

Tel: 01844 339226 www.waterperrygardens.co.uk Near Wheatley, Oxfordshire OX33 1LA Eight acres of inspirational ornamental gardens steeped in horticultural history, quality Plant Centre, Garden Shop, Gift Barn, Gallery and Tea Shop. Close to Oxford in the heart of the countryside. Waterperry Gardens - a place to explore, relax and shop in beautiful surroundings all year round. OPEN: 10am to 5.30pm April to October, 10am to 5pm November to March. Please visit our website for more information.

Specialists in hardy trees, shrubs and climbers including a huge selection of unusual and rare species and varieties. Expert advice is available from our helpful staff. The nursery is surrounded by a nine-acre woodland garden (RHS Partner Garden), and visitors are welcome all year round. Informative website and reliable mail order service if you would like plants delivered.

Tel: 01530 413700 sales@bluebellnursery.com | www.bluebellnursery.com Annwell Lane, Smisby, Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire LE65 2TA

Autumn is the season when Hever’s striking trees come to the fore. Colour abounds with vivid maples and brilliant beech. Boston ivy scrambles up the Castle walls whilst Vitis coignetiae clothes bridges and pergolas with crimson. Visit on a still day for the very best views of reflections in the moats and lake. O PEN : See website for opening times and prices.

Spring Reach Nursery grows a fantastic range of clematis, trees, hedging, ferns, shrubs, fruit, perennials, roses, climbers and grasses. Enjoy the delights of the Autumn with these stars that light up borders: Acer ‘Osakazuki’, Berberis ‘Admiration’, Callicarpa ‘Profusion’, Euonymus alatus , the grasses Muhlenbergia capillaris , Miscanthus ‘Ferner Osten’ and Panicum ‘Hot Rod’, and, brand new for 2020, Pittosporum ‘Bannow Bay’.

Tel: 01483 284769 info@springreachnursery.co.uk | www.springreachnursery.co.uk Spring Reach Nursery, Long Reach, Ockham, Surrey GU23 6PG

A plantsman’s paradise and an independent nursery situated in the West Midlands. We specialise in Hellebores, Hardy Cyclamen, Salvias, Hepaticas, Lewisias, Hydrangeas, Dwarf Conifers, Snowdrops, Primula auriculas and many more beautiful plants. Our mail order service sends plants, garden essentials and gifts to mainland UK destinations. Please visit our website for up to date information regarding opening times and events. Free colour brochure quote ENGGAR20

Tel: 01384 401996 mailorder@ashwoodnurseries.com | www.ashwoodnurseries.com Ashwood Lower Lane, Kingswinford, West Midlands DY6 0AE

Hedging UK are specialist growers of quality hedging plants. Plants are available to purchase at wholesale prices across the UK through our mail order service. Buy direct from the grower, delivered direct to your door. Readers of The English Garden get a 5% discount (quote TEG2020).

Established for 25 years, Woottens is a traditional plant nursery selling hardy perennials, which are grown and propagated on their site in rural Suffolk. Woottens also specialises in Irises, Auriculas, Pelargoniums and Hemerocallis. The nursery runs an efficient mail order service all year round. Open again on Saturdays from 29 August. See the website for full details.

Tel: 01502 478258 info@woottensplants.co.uk | www.woottensplants.com Woottens of Wenhaston, Wenhaston, Suffolk IP19 9HF

A busy nursery in rural Lancashire, Daisy Clough specialises in a carefully selected range of over 700 perennials and grasses. Open seven days a week, the nursery also offers a good selection of shrubs, trees, container plants and fruit. Plenty of homegrown vegetable plants are available through spring and summer. A full plant list is available to view on our website. Our garden shop sells seeds, tools and essential garden sundries. We have a beautiful homeware and clothing shop, a deli and a tearoom to round off your visit.

Tel: 01524 793104 info@daisyclough.com | www.daisyclough.com Daisy Clough Nurseries Ltd, Station Lane, Scorton, Preston, Lancs PR3 1AN

Visit the famous Grade I Listed gardens and enjoy the outstanding autumn displays at “The finest woodland gardens in England”. Lovely scenic walks around the seven tree-lined lakes with dazzling reflections of autumn colour. See wallabies and peacocks wandering the estate, as well as deer, rare birds and other wildlife.

So much to see and do: Dolls’ House Museum, cafés and gift shop, Michelin-starred restaurant and year-round programme of events.

Gardens and letter forms are not so far apart, muses Katherine Swift as she considers Ian Hamilton Finlay’s inscription garden at Little Sparta near Edinburgh

‘ F rom this place WORDS may fl y abroad. Not to perish on waves of sound, Not to vary with the writer’s hand, But fi xed in time, Having been verifi ed by proof.’ Words from a type specimen hanging above the printing press in my hall. ‘Friend, you stand on sacred ground. This is a printing o ce.’ My house is full of printing paraphernalia: in the cellar, alphabets of wooden poster type, founts of lead foundry type, pages of type locked in their formes ready for printing or distributed into their upper and lower cases (the wooden cases in which type is housed), share fl oorspace with overwintering dahlias. Cases of books about printing and printing presses line the walls of the rooms at the front of the house where my nine orange trees spend the winter. I fell in love with type faces after coming across

Daniel Berkeley Updike’s vast, two-volume Printing

Types in a library in Canada one snowy winter.

I went on to start a thesis on the 18th-century

Birmingham printer and type designer John

Baskerville. Baskerville’s friend and neighbour was the gardener William Shenstone who fi lled his garden with inscriptions carved upon urns and garden seats; Baskerville himself was a writing master and engraver of slate grave stones before he turned to printing. Gardens and letter forms are not so far apart. In my own garden I have one of

Shenstone’s sayings inscribed on an urn, made by the potter Robin Welch: ‘The works of a person that builds, begin immediately to decay; while those of him who plants begin directly to improve’.

The sculpture garden, as a site to display a collection of sculpture, was an ancient idea that became fashionable in the second half of the 20th century. But the garden of inscriptions, as exemplifi ed by Shenstone’s garden in Halesowen, and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden Little Sparta in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, is yet to fi nd its moment. At Little Sparta, inscriptions drawn from

Ovid, the metaphysical poetry of Henry Vaughan and the sayings of the French Revolutionary leader

Saint-Just are carved on paths, stepping stones, seats, fences and stiles. In each case words, design, and garden setting are all integral to the meaning. For example, the sublimely simple W AVE

is sited at precisely the point where one pool of water overfl ows into another, the pause between the fi rst and second letter signalling both the slight resistance of the water as it tips over, and the hidden presence of the word Ave, the ancient Latin word of greeting – whispered, as it were, by the trickling of the water.

It was Shenstone who coined the phrase ‘landscape gardening’ (as distinct from kitchen gardening or fl ower gardening), to describe the sort of garden that ‘consists in pleasing the imagination’. Inscriptions do just that: they make us see things more clearly and open our eyes to more than what is just around us.

To commission an inscription for your own garden, a good place to start is The Lettering Arts Trust (01728 688393; letteringartstrust.org.uk) where you can see examples and fi nd a letter-carver to carry out the work. Q

BEVERLEY FRY PORTRAIT JULIA RIGBY ILLUSTRATION