The Dye Garden project was started in 2014 by Toni Hicks and involved staff and students – mainly from Textiles and 3D courses. The aim was to start an academic project that would support staff and MDes Textiles research. There was a lot of interest from the outset both at Grand Parade and from the wider community.

Toni applied for and received a small grant to buy some tools and fertiliser. Having been a building site for many years, the ground was compacted and the first summer was spent manually digging into the chalk to prepare for the project. Every year the cultivated area has expanded.

Currently, the beds are being developed so that the project can produce both a wider range of dye plants and larger quantities of key colours: woad, madder and weld, which produce blue, red and yellow respectively.