The garden beds dedicated to textile and dye plans present in rotation each year perennials and seasonals grown specifically to obtain vegetal fibers or colored pigments for clothes and fabrics. Before the introduction of cotton, nettle, linen, and hemp were the most common plants for textiles fibers, accompanied by wild plants and flowers of great usefulness like teasel, Dipsacum fullonum,used to card wool, or soapwort, Saponaria officinalis, important in washing and cleaning. Woad, Isatis tinctoria, and rubia, Rubia tinctorum, are surely protagonists among the dye plants: they have always been grown in Northern Italy to extract the colors red (rubia) and blue (woad) alongside many other wild plants that made the colors yellow (Scotch broom and chamomile) or brown (walnut). In all the garden. it is a surprise and a discovery to be surrounded by well-known plants for their production of fruit, vegetables, and medicines but used in the past also to extract pigments (for example pomegranates, elderberries, spinach, mint, and dandelion).
