While Glyndebourne draws crowds for its celebrated opera performances, the venue’s grounds offer another remarkable attraction. The estate’s garden supplies natural colourants that dress performers on stage, according to a report for Sussex Life.

The Sussex venue, home to acclaimed revivals of works such as George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and appearances by renowned vocalists like Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland and Kiri Te Kanawa, now features something unexpected in its grounds.

Andrea Benson cultivates a dedicated dye garden on the property, providing botanically-sourced pigments for costume work. The harvest supplies Jenny Mercer, the opera house’s dye room supervisor, who transforms the plant materials into hues for cast wardrobes.

The garden contains no wilted exhibits or decorative installations. Instead, flowers and foliage are cultivated specifically for their colour-producing properties. Once gathered and desiccated, they are passed to Jenny, who prepares them for theatrical use.

Plant-based colourants debuted on costumes during the 2022 staging of The Wreckers. Since then, some form of natural dyeing has appeared in every Glyndebourne production, whether subtly softening bright white shirts to prevent them catching stage lighting, or constructing complete character outfits.

The concept originated when 50-year-old Jenny participated in a natural dyeing workshop at Plaw Hatch Farm close to East Grinstead. The session was conducted by Deborah Barker from The South East England Fibreshed, an organisation established to encourage more sustainable textile production.

Jenny, who has spent 15 years at Glyndebourne, recalled the experience as revelatory. She recognised that combining the venue’s celebrated gardens with costume production seemed an obvious step that had been overlooked.

Jenny characterises the approach as cyclical. The Fibreshed ethos prioritises eliminating unnecessary carbon emissions, avoiding synthetic materials in threads and dyes, cultivating plants locally, and manufacturing garments regionally.

She partnered with 54-year-old Andrea, who joined Glyndebourne’s gardening team seven years ago. For Andrea, it represented an intriguing and unconventional project. She had previously worked at the Horniman Museum in London, where she contributed to a dye garden. At home, she occupies herself with crochet and wool spinning. She found the work absorbing, though the Glyndebourne undertaking required entirely different knowledge.

The Horniman displays focused on education, cultivating specimens to showcase individual colours. At Glyndebourne, the challenge involved producing sufficient quantities of reliable colourants and identifying which species would yield them.

Merging Andrea’s previous experience with Jenny’s expertise, the pair investigated suitable cultivation options. They commenced planning the dye garden in 2019, testing species capable of producing desired shades in adequate volumes.

Andrea explained that certain plants were already known to perform well. Weld and dahlias rank among established dye plants, though varieties matter considerably. Many persicaria species serve merely ornamental purposes, but persicaria tinctoria (Japanese indigo) generates blue dye from its foliage.

Some candidates proved theoretically viable but impractical for actual use. Jenny might identify a promising colour source, only for Andrea to explain that local conditions prohibited cultivation due to tropical requirements or specific soil pH needs.

Jenny acknowledged that certain plants demanded excessive cultivation effort relative to their yield. Safflower produces attractive results, but extracting its colour involves an elaborate process yielding only minimal quantities.

Last year they cultivated 14 distinct plant varieties, predominantly primary colours, supplemented by specimens from the broader garden. Green ironically requires blending, with fresh green proving particularly elusive.

Rich black colouration derives from trees, specifically oak galls (gall nuts), which develop on various oak species and yield deep black pigments.

Andrea recently preserved wood chips from recently removed cherry trees. Jenny described the resulting colour as warm and pinkish-beige, which she employs frequently, now stockpiled in potato sacks.

The estate now grows all plants without chemicals. This presented certain difficulties. Occasional sheep have wandered into the grounds, while numerous pheasants create dust baths among seed beds, scattering contents. However, cultivating at commercial scale means losing a few specimens to wildlife causes minimal impact. The site supports a healthy ecosystem containing natural predators like birds and hedgehogs that manage slug and snail populations.

Jenny’s primary obstacle involves anticipating designer requirements. She cannot always inform Andrea what colour schemes the upcoming season demands. With six operas staged annually, last year’s production of Saul required extensive blackwork. Natural dyes could have served, but the combined weight of period costumes and corsetry would have necessitated impractical quantities of colourant. They managed to treat all corset laces instead, given the more manageable scale.

The procedure demands considerable effort, and schedules occasionally prevent adequate preparation. For Falstaff, Jenny had just a fortnight to work with, employing black hollyhocks and coreopsis seed heads to achieve the character’s disreputable vest and trousers. Production timelines shift during rehearsals, requiring constant adaptability.

Planning commences each January. Andrea preserves all dried materials from the previous season, meaning Jenny works with prior year’s stock. They then compile an inventory and adjust cultivation plans accordingly.

Andrea noted last year marked their first thorough planning session. Both lean towards practical and creative approaches rather than detailed spreadsheets, though these tools helped track dried plant volumes and identify gaps.

They cultivate both annual and perennial species and have discovered many serve medicinal purposes. Plants bearing the descriptor tinctoria frequently possess therapeutic properties as well. Bay leaf generates pleasing colouration and aids digestion. Natural dyes offer additional versatility through using different plant parts. Weld stems yield yellow tones, though flower and bud portions produce brighter yellows.

Andrea gathers and dries blooms throughout summer, then lifts any relevant roots at season’s end for subsequent use. At the time of discussion, she had just begun collecting the initial flower harvest for drying.

Despite establishing routines, the pair continues experimenting to uncover new possibilities.

Their most recent breakthrough involves a Japanese species called Murasaki, whose roots produce purple pigment. This shade held particular prestige among nobility and royalty, especially during the late-sixteenth-century Elizabethan period.

Jenny noted the plant remains obscure in Britain, with guidance available almost exclusively in Japanese. She tracked down a single blog with detailed instructions, though these proved complex. Both consider it a genuinely scientific endeavour that has proven fascinating.

When asked about employing purple dyes the following year, Jenny responded that cultivation requires multiple years. Purple originally derived from sea molluscs, though thousands proved necessary for a single gram of dye, making fabric costs astronomical. She finds the historical aspect particularly compelling.

Plants serve fresh, dried, or frozen, while commercial outlets stock powdered versions. Dyeing methodology varies according to desired colour intensity, though plant material quantity generally corresponds to fabric weight.

Jenny emphasised the importance of clean dye baths, with any pollen fragments requiring filtration to prevent uneven patches. A prominent performer sporting a spotted collar would prove unacceptable.

Fabric receives mordant treatment using metal salts to help pigments adhere, though this step proves unnecessary when tannins from trees and bark provide natural mordanting properties. Mordants improve light resistance, essential for maintaining consistent colour across costumes expected to endure 20 years.

Fabric subsequently soaks in the liquid colourant and simmers to achieve the required depth. Jenny terms this methodology slow textiles.

For this year’s Tosca staging, shirts and T-shirts received colouration using cherry bark combined with weld to brighten gold braid, applied to smocks for an ecclesiastical aesthetic. Wardrobes also undergo artificial ageing to appear worn.

Falstaff’s tennis shoes underwent dipping treatment, with plimsoles submerged in dye while keeping rubber soles above the liquid. Jenny expressed satisfaction at replacing chemical dyes that would enter drainage systems with their cultivated plant alternatives.

The two colleagues clearly share mutual appreciation and have developed an excellent working rapport over time.

Andrea observed that initial uncertainty about feasibility and appearance gave way to widespread enthusiasm. She still encounters bewildered reactions when mentioning her work, with people assuming she means her specimens are dying. The gardens constitute an essential component of Glyndebourne’s identity, drawing her deeper into the theatrical experience. She now feels connected not merely to creating an attractive garden for visitors, but to the productions themselves, linking both elements.