The Gathering Garden Magazine
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The Dye Garden Nobody's Planting: Why Safflower Deserves a Spot Next to Your Tomatoes
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Long before synthetic dye, safflower colored the world's fabrics, rouge pots and rice. Here's how to grow it in a home cutting garden, and dry it for color that lasts all winter. -
Three Thousand Years of Keeping Flowers Alive: A History of Drying and Preserving Blooms
From Egyptian funerary garlands to Victorian herbariums to modern silica gel and freeze-drying, humans have spent three thousand years solving the same problem: how to make a flower outlast the person who cut it. -
Safflower: The 4,000-Year-Old "Fake Saffron" Now Trending in Dried Arrangements
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Safflower dyed King Tut's tomb linens and stood in for saffron for centuries. Here's its history — and how to style dried safflower in your home today.
