From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. Until I met today's guest, James Young early in 2025, it hadn't really registered in my brain that some of the familiar annuals I grow from seeds like cosmos and marigolds and even purple basil could also double as dye plants. James's co-owner of Grand Prismatic Seed, a gorgeous and information-packed online seed catalog based in northern Utah where dye plants are one specialty alongside regional natives and high desert-adapted edibles and flowers. that offer up natural dyes are a topic today on the show, so more in a moment but first these messages. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends, wholesale flower bulbs. A third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web,

Colorblends.com. And by High Moeng seeds, Wolcott Vermont, professional quality vegetable, flower, and herbal seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, High Moeng Seeds.com. and by white flower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants. On the web, Whiteflower Farm.com. In 2016, James Young co-founded Grand Prismatic Seed with Guy Banner, a horticulturist at Red butte Garden in Arboretum at the University of Utah who works part-time at the seed company.

James is passionate about the fiber arts.

He's been an expert in it since high school

and is also deep into the art and science of natural dyes

whether sourced from garden plants or forged ones.

And I'm so glad to welcome him to the show today.

How are you, James?

Hey Margaret, thank you so much for having me on.

Nice to speak to you again.

Yeah, you again. Yeah you too I am doing well. It's abnormally warm here in Utah So that's a little jarring. We're about 20 degrees warmer than average for this time of year So and I should say we're recording in you know December a little while before this is going to air So who knows what will happen by? Because the thing about the weather these days is it's totally unpredictable. Yeah, we've been super cold. So yeah. It's a little one of my favorite things about farming in Utah is being able to stop weeding and worrying about things outdoors. Once it's usually like mid-October but this year it's just been so warm that we have lots of weeds germinating and growing so... Oh well keep at it. So when we did a New York Times garden column in 2025 I was struck by just how many familiar plants as I said in the introduction you know that I think of as like cutting flowers or herbs or whatever, you know, fitting into some other usage category or also die plants. And I want to, you know, get to some of that diversity in a minute and talk about lots of your favorites. And you have an incredible assortment in the Grand Prismatic Catalog. But first a little background on you because if I remember correctly from the last time we spoke, your personal sort of origin story about plant-based dying involved knitting and a bathtub. Is that right? Were those two key elements? Yeah, those are two keys. So when I was in high school, my sister and my grandma kind up to teach me how to knit. And so knitting was my gateway into the fiber arts world. And my sister's friends mom worked at a little knitting shop in Ogden, Utah pretty close to where we lived. She did a lot of dyeing and most of that was in her bathtub with a lot of roving that then she would spin into yarn. So she would talk about her dyeing process and she would mainly use things like Kool-Aid to do these really gaudy bright colors. And for Give Me For Laughing. Yeah, it's, I can't even imagine what her tub looked like. I'm sure it was had all sorts of rings of colors in it that she couldn't wash out, but she had mentioned the back in medieval Europe, they would use urine to dye indigo or use an indigo dyeing. What's referred to as a sick vat. And that kind of sparked this curiosity in me of all of the types of dyes that had been used before synthetic dyes. Right. And, you know, throughout human history up until the mid 1800s, all dyes were natural dyes. And as an avid hiker when I was younger and lover of plants, just learning that I could use these beautiful plants around me to color wool and then make beautiful things was just a really exciting thing. So yeah, that's kind of what led me into natural dyes. And then when Guy and I, my partner, Guy lived in Oregon, I really struggled with the wet weather there and the winter. So that's when I really made dying a sustained craft for myself because it was just so cozy to cook up a pot of diplants of flowers,, like ends, other things that I could forage or grow and then just kind of be a little witch stirring my pot. Be warm cozy over the cauldron, huh? In the winter. Yeah. And then just be able to make, you know, bright beautiful things and a time that felt pretty, and dreary. So. And the diversity, as I said, you know, many ago, the diversity of things that, you know, many of them were familiar to me, but I didn't know they were die plants. Like I knew that certain plants I'd heard of, you know, certain plants like Madder or whatever were die plants, but I didn't know that like so many things around me. And of course, I sort of must have known in my brain somewhere, but you know, I didn't look at them and think that as well. So if we were sort of going to begin an adventure and we didn't have Kool-Aid in a bathtub. If we were as gardener, it's going to begin an adventure. Is it some of the annuals that we would think about starting with if we wanted to sort of try first time out? Is that where one begins to sort of... Yeah, yeah. I think that annuals are a great way to start, especially if you don't have a lot of space because a lot of them can be grown on like a patio and pots. And like I think, I think marigolds are like a really great gateway plant for dying.

Before I got into dyes, I was kind of bored by marigolds.

Like they're just so ubiquitous.

And they weren't something that really caught my attention.

And then after getting into dying,

just seeing the like range of beautiful colors you can make with them and how effortless they are to grow. It was just really exciting and there are so many varieties of miracles that you can even use the leaves for dyeing, for eco printing. So just tell us real quick what eco printing is because that's one of the really fun projects I I even think I could do Yeah, yeah, it's art. It looks so artistic to finish product, but it's I It doesn't require me to like sketch something on my own artist, you know meaning that kind of artistic Yeah, yeah, definitely So there are multiple ways to do eco-printing. There's a Japanese method called Tatochi-Zomi where you actually hammer flowers into fabric. So that one's kind of fun, especially to do with younger people. I feel like it's a fun, interactive way to die. And so that you just, you need to have your fabric cleaned and then you need to apply a mordant to it. Right. There's that word mordant. Yeah. Yeah. So mordants are really important for natural dying. It's basically a mineral salt that forms a bridge between your material that you're dying, your natural fiber, and your dye compound. And so I feel like it can sound intimidating it's it's pretty simple. You basically just measure out the right amount of mordant and then put your fibers in it for cotton. You just need hot water and the mordant and the fiber for protein fibers. You'll need to heat it up on a stove top and keep it at a sustained heat for longer. But then once you have that mortant on the natural fiber for eco printing, you can either do the flower pounding that to Taki Zomi method or you can arrange the flowers that you have however however you'd like on the fabric, and then you basically roll it up really tightly. And so I like to use a copper pipe because I can really push down on the fabric when I roll, and so getting that pressure really tight will get really crisp prints. And then so you'll roll it up and then tie the fabric to that copper pipe and then I'll just put it over a pot of steaming water for like a half an hour or so. And then it just does this really nice crisp print. But then there's also like you can just crumble up a bunch of dried flowers instead of doing a crisp print and even just squish it all together. It doesn't have to be. Right, it can be kind of more blotches and abstract and so forth. I can do like really beautiful water color effects. And so I feel like the eco printing stuff is really entry point. Yeah. And not only because it's pretty simple, but you don't need that much dye material to be able to do it. Right. Because if you're wanting to do an immersion dye of like yardage of cotton fabric. Right. Yeah. Big bat and whatever. They're back to your witches brewery or bathtub. Yeah. Definitely. Big pot lots of material and so. Right. Yeah. So and the thing and then we're just skimming the surface because in this conversation because obviously time is short and so forth.

But there's great instructions and I mentioned in the introduction your website is very rich in information and also I'll give the link to sort of some of the basic how to that's on your website. website and then you also refer people to some places, books and things, places you've

learned over the years that you respect and think are incredible sources of how to information. So with the transcript of the show, over on away to garden.com, we can give people the window into more, you know. And meantime, we could talk about some plants. Yeah, some plants. So yeah, so some of the ones that, and there are there are of course also perennials. So if we want to, if we think we want to maybe invest in the future of dying, we just talked about, you know, maybe some annuals for pots and so forth, but a quick, but we can also get some perennials in the ground that aren't going to pay off for a while. And those are on your website. What are a couple of those, for instance? I think the one that I always encourage people to get in the ground if they're thinking that dying is going to be something they'll want to be doing is matter. So rubia tink torum. It is one of the best sources for a red pigment, which is difficult to get in natural dyes. And it's really nice to get in as soon as possible because ideally you would wait three growing seasons until you harvest the roots to die with. And so the sooner you get it in, you know, the closer you are to that harvest. And I've had great luck with plants that are just two years old. Once you start growing it, if you don't cut it back when it goes to seed, it will aggressively spread through your garden. So I also encourage people to, before the berries are ripe, just cut it back to the ground or cut those berries off so that it doesn't spread around where you don't want it. But because it does spread, I often end up having one or two year old plants and places that I don't really want them. And when I've used those, I've gotten lovely coral colors.

Sometimes you're like... Interesting. Yeah. But yeah, three years, you're going to have the nice large roots that will be full of the pigment as alizarin that's the nice red pigment. And so with that, with the sort of quicker the annual type or the nice red pigment. Mm-hmm. And so with the sort of quicker, the annual type, or the perennials, some of the perennials that will pay off earlier, what are some, I mean, I was fascinated when we spoke before, like some things, again, that are in people's gardens, like black-eyed Susan's or Becky, I heard a, you know, black Holly Hawk, the Alcya Rosia. I mean, these are things that are also die plants, and yet they may be in our gardens already, yes? Yeah, definitely. And those will produce flowers the first year, and then be perennial, which is great. Right. And Dyer's Camamill is another perennial that I think is really lovely to add to a Dyerars garden. It's Coda Tink Toria. It has a lot of different flavonoid dyes in it. A key one being Luteolin, which... What sounds yellow? Luteolin. Luteolin. Which just has like the most wonderful warm yellow dye. It's really light fast, wash fast, and it really layers beautifully with other natural dyes. So with Indigo to get nice greens or matter for like a bright, long-lasting orange. And they usually will produce some flowers in their first year, but the second year, they really explode. And it's one that has really surprised me with how cold hearty it is. And I know this year's a lot warmer than other years in my area, but some that I have growing at my sister's house have been blooming up until this point, so through multiple frosts. So yeah, just a super tough plant. And it also brings in a lot of beneficial insects to the garden, which is... Right. The nice ones. The diars chamomile. Where does the color blue come from, for instance, or if I want green, where does that come from? Do you know what I mean? We talked about some things that are like red. We talked about new matter, and some things that are sort of probably yellow, but where did these other colors come from? There, for blue, there are hundreds of species of plants that contain the precursor for the indigo pigment and decontent. But there's probably about five main ones that humans have found to be, I guess, more cost effective to grow for the space and the amount of dye in it. And so Indigo Ferritinctoria is true Indigo, and that's native to Indian Southeast Asia. go ferrous Ferris, Suffrick, Tosa, known as NEL, is native to Central and South America. And so a lot of like mine and Aztec dies. We're dyed with that in Europe, Izadist, Tinktoria, or Wode. But it's probably the most common. And that's something that a lot of people contact us for seed for, but it's pretty invasive in the Western West. Yes. And so it's not legal for us to transport seeds. But in some parts of the country, you can grow it. And it does. It has less indigo per leaf than other varieties, but still makes beautiful blues. And then persicaria tinctoria is Japanese indigo. And that's what we have found to be the most adaptable of the indigo-bearing species to grow in the US. You from Alaska to Texas, you can grow persicaria, TinkToria. And so that's probably one of our favorite plants to grow. and just grown as annual, and it has a really high content of Indigo. That's a great one to use for blue, of course, but also pairing with yellow dyes for green. Green is actually strange to think that greens hard to get with natural dyes, since you outside and everything is green. But that's why I asked because I wonder is it the easiest thing to get or the hardest? Because you know it was going to be one or the other. No, it's not the harder ones to get for sure. And so usually pairing indigo with with a yellow dye is a great way to get green. Something like the black eyed Susan, Rebecca Hurted, that can get you like all of the green color. It's slightly less light fast, I would say. And if you like spill something that's like a sit-up on it, it will kind of change the color to like a... sometimes I'll get like weird and more ruined splotches with pH changes. But it's definitely a fun one to use for greens, just not as a staple. So you, besides selling seed for things that we've been talking about in many, many other possibilities, you also sell harvested material to use for dying. Do you do? Is that true? Did I make that? Yeah, yeah, usually, um, like, I think this year it wasn't until July that we posted our dried dye materials. Each year it's like a different mix of things. Usually we'll hoard a bunch of dye materials for our own projects. Then when we have overflow, we'll list it to customers. Some people get into it that way. They try it that way as well as it would be. Yeah, yeah. And I think that it's nice to get some material that someone else has grown if you don't have a lot of space to grow things or you're wondering if dying is something that you'll actually be enjoying. But there's also a lot of stuff you can harvest. A lot of invasives just in your neighborhood can be used for dying. And so like I love growing things and being able to tend things, but if you don't have space or time to do that, you can definitely find a list of invasives in your area that can. Right. So we have maybe three minutes or so. So let's talk about some sort of like foraged things that you like you mentioned. I think you mentioned Lycan at one point, for example, some foraged things that people might recognize the names of or whatever it is that people also used. Yeah. When we lived in Oregon, we would like to go out into the forest after a big wind storms and find like lungwort lichen that had fallen from branches. And that would do like a really beautiful cinnamon color on wool. Oak gals are really good. They're high in tannins. And so with that, you and with the lichen, you don't need to use them ordained if you don't want to because of that high tannin content. Here in Utah, we have a lot of fragmites that grows long waterways that chokes out native wetlands. And that can be used for like a greenish color dye, again, not as lightfast as Indigo, but still lovely. And then in the Western states, like I mentioned, the road being invasive, there is so much diars, road up in the mountains here. And so people in our region can just go harvest free blue in the wild. And not only are you getting a nice pigment or dye, but you are also getting rid of that invasive that kind of chokes out the native habitat. Mm. And you dye not just fabrics, you dye your wool that you do as well, right? You die wool for your knitting. Yeah, wool is probably the main thing I've died over the years. I recently switched over to cotton because my sister has been teaching me how to quilt and sew. Oh. It's been a fun transition to move over to Cotton. Well, James, yeah, you've all the fiber arts, right? You're here and you're you're trying everything right? Yeah, I love to devil. I definitely say not a master in any of them like well, looks pretty good to me. The stuff that I've seen of yours looks pretty good to me. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad to talk to you again. And and as I said, I'll give people this is just, you know, we just dabbled a little bit in some of the how-to, but I'll give people all those links to the information on your site for a deeper dive, and also some of the references that you recommend with the transcript of the show. I'll do give those links. And also, of course, to your catalog, which is pretty spectacular. And as I said in the introduction, isn't just die plants, a lot of regional natives and high desert adapted flowers and edibles and so forth so especially for Western listeners, really some beautiful things and I'm just as I said I'm just happy to speak to you again so thanks for making time today. Yeah thank you so much. I'll talk to you again soon I hope James and I hope I'll talk to all the rest of you soon again too. Now don't miss an episode. You can subscribe free to the podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify and you can find me anytime at awaytagarden.com and on Facebook and on Instagram as at a way to garden. And happy gardening meantime. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by colorblends wholesale Flower Bulbs, a third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. And by High Moenged Seeds, Wolcott Vermont Professional Quality Vegetable Flower and herbal seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified.

On the web... WALKA VIRMANT, Professional Quality Vegetable, Flower, and Erbil Seeds that are 100% organic

and non-GMO project verified.

On the web, highmoingseeds.com and by White Flower Farm offering a wide range of carefully

...