Squint at the roof of the grey, brutalist National Theatre on London’s South Bank and you might be able to spy a riot of colour spilling from the concrete.
This is the theatre’s new natural dye garden, from which flowers are being picked to create the colours for the costumes worn in the theatre’s plays.
Chemical dyes are often toxic for the environment and bad for human health, so the costume designers at the theatre are experimenting with using flowers including indigo, dahlias, hollyhocks, camomile and wild fennel to create the vivid colours used in their productions.
The head textile artist, Liz Honeybone, is buzzing with excitement about the opportunities the new garden is bringing.
“It’s a sort of secret garden,” she says. “You walk in and suddenly there is this burst of yellows and golds and black flowers, a lot of black flowers being grown this year. And this is our mega year where everything’s come up completely brilliantly, and we’re now experimenting.”
She has been very concerned about the health impacts of using harsh, synthetic chemical dyes, which require users to be swaddled in protective clothing, which natural dyes made of flowers do not.
“There used to be a thing called dyer’s nose, which is basically when the aniline dyes came in,” Honeybone said, “They used to destroy your nasal membrane. So artificial dyes have long history of being pretty bad for you, and I’m still quite haunted by the fact that I knew this fantastic woman who was a top dyer when I was just this little bug, and she dyed for years, and when she retired she just died instantly. You’re left with these things, and you do worry – however ‘health and safety’ you are, there’s these chemicals around.”
The theatre is planning to use natural dyes from the garden in every production at the South Bank going forwards, starting with Playboy of the Western World, which is on this autumn and winter.
Claire Wardroper, costume production supervisor at the theatre, said it was “a beautiful early 19th century piece, with lots of nice woolly jumpers, because it’s set in rural Ireland, and we can certainly get some nice colours into them. The designer for that is fully onboard with producing some things that are naturally dyed as well.”
The pair say they are trying to bring a gentler, more environmentally friendly way of dying into the mainstream. “We are saying that if you want to use this horrible synthetic dye, you can do that, but you can achieve this beautiful look by using a natural dye, and we can do it a little bit slower and a bit more sort of organically,” said Honeybone.
Wardroper added: “It’s unfortunate to say, but the theatre and film and anything creative in one-shot opportunity entertainment has a history of being incredibly wasteful.”
The garden has provided a bounty of flowers to be boiled up and turned into dye. Their indigo plants, which provide a beautiful deep blue, have done particularly well.
Honeybone said: “It’s been such a good harvest. My indigo is more than I can cope with. I’ve got three shows going on at the moment, so I’ve had to recruit people to help me.”
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People may imagine the colours extracted from flowers will be muted compared with synthetic dyes, but Honeybone said this could not be further from the truth and she has been able to create neon greens and yellows. “Our forefathers were drowning in colour. They loved it, it wasn’t hard to get and all the tapestries that were up on the wall were a riot of colour. What we’re seeing now is the sad, faded leftovers,” she said.
Honeybone says she has become “obsessed” with natural dying. “My daughter gave me a bunch of flowers on Mother’s Day, and I noticed there was some golden rod in it, so whisked that out and dyed with it just to see what it yielded. And it was the most glorious, strong yellow.”
The garden is not only used for dyes but also as a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the theatre. The pair said actors were frequently seen pacing among the flowers, or sitting down on benches to learn their lines.
The space is also a haven for wildlife. The grey concrete of the South Bank does not have a huge amount to offer pollinators, and they have been swarming to the garden to sample the nectar from the varied dye plants.
Wardroper said: “We’re seeing so much more wildlife, like hummingbird moths, and we’ve got bees on the National Theatre roof which produce honey for the National Theatre. And they’re loving the variety of plants that we’ve planted as well. These are a new stock of plants that they just haven’t had access to. So the bee person that comes in and caters to the bees is very happy.”
The pair hope that most if not all of the costumes at the theatre can eventually be produced using natural methods. But for now, Honeybone is enjoying the opportunity to start using these dyes.
She said: “This is such an all round sensory experience, totally engulfed in the smells and the feeling. And you’re touching petals and you’re crushing leaves, and you know it’s so fully sensory, the smell, the look – it is just wonderful.”