Dyer's Coreopsis | Coreopsis tinctoria
Highly-pigmented blooms that can be used for dyeing.
Flowers are embodied sunshine, and sometimes that sunshine can be harvested in the form of a golden-orange dye. Native to plains and meadows of North America, Dyer’s Coreopsis has long been used by textile artists for its richly pigmented petals. Easy to grow and produces a plethora of cadmium red blossoms, sometimes ringed with yellow. Our strain has a higher proportion of solid red blooms than most. Also wonderful as an ornamental alone.
Try making your own solar dye at home using handkerchiefs, napkins, or pillowcases: Measuring twice the weight of fabric to blooms, pour boiling water over your flowers and steep the fabric up to one week in the sun.
Start indoors 6 weeks before last frost, and transplant after frost, or direct sow outdoors after danger of frost has passed. Sow shallowly; light aids in germination. Thin direct sown plants to 12" spacing when the seedlings set true leaves. Harvest the abundant blooms and deadhead frequently to maximize blooming period. Use the cadmium-red fresh or dried blossoms for dyeing, or enjoy their wispy beauty as an ornamental or cut flower.
Days to Germination 7-10
Days to Maturity 65
Planting Depth Barely Cover
Spacing in Row 12"
Spacing Between Rows 18"
Height at Maturity 30"
Width at Maturity 18"
Sun Preference Full Sun to Light Shade
Kara Patrowicz loves the alchemy-like process of combining different palettes and fiber media. She used Dyer's Coreopsis for several colours in this piece, resulting in a watery effect, with embroidered details bringing clarity to the composition.
About Hudson Valley Seed Company
They are a values-driven seed company that practices and celebrates responsible seed production and stewardship. Hudson Valley are best known for their beautiful artist-design seed packs (Art Packs) that appeal to gardeners, gift buyers, and lovers of art and nature.
These Art Packs, most fundamentally, tell stories. Hudson Valley challenges artists to convey in a manner that is fully their own, the history and meaning of the seed variety contained in each pack. These stories were once integral to traditional societies-stories of seeds were often origin stories for entire communities and peoples, and the lore and beliefs that accumulated around seed varieties reflected the nearly familial way in which gardeners and farmers regarded their crops. Our society is, by and large, no longer connected to plants this way. But we like to think these Art Packs help to stitch our fragmented world back together: useful seeds, evocative art, both equally valuable to our experience of being human.