Newtonville: Look what came!

I am very excited to report that I received in the mail yesterday my package of seeds from the Cottage Gardener. Mary and Dan Brittain, the owners of this wonderful organic seed company are one of the sponsors of the 100 mile ART Project and they have very kindly shipped me 360 woad seeds.

Woad (Isatis tinctoria) makes a beautiful blue colour and is one of the rare plants that can make a reasonable lightfast pigment colour – especially when worked in tempera or kept beneath varnish. It is one of my favourite blues (but, to be honest, I seem to find whatever blue I’m looking at my favourite for that moment). On a small scale I have worked with woad, and produced some very nice pigment; it will be very interesting to work with this many plants!

By the way, I don’t think it is too late yet to get some seeds shipped from the Cottage Gardener so, if you are interested, go to www.cottagegardener.com to browse their online catalog.