Printing from the Garden:
A Botanical Printing
and Natural Dyeing Guide
Printing from the Garden is a richly illustrated botanical printing book devoted to the art of eco printing and natural dyeing with flowers and leaves. Both practical and poetic, it invites readers into a slower, more intimate relationship with plants — where fabric and paper become vessels for living color.
At its heart is a carefully documented compendium of 30 distinct plants, revealing their subtle, dramatic, and often surprising effects when printed on fabric and paper. Each impression is a collaboration between plant and fiber — a record of season, color, and imprint.
This is a natural dyeing guide for artists, gardeners, and makers who wish to transform the ephemeral beauty of the garden into lasting form.
Gorgeous photography by Kristen Teig.
Order a signed copy of Printing from the Garden, my comprehensive botanical printing book and natural dyeing guide.
This beautifully illustrated eco printing book teaches how to create one-of-a-kind prints using flowers and leaves, featuring step-by-step instruction and a compendium of 30 plants documenting their stunning effects on fabric and paper.
“A masterclass in learning how to use garden and foraged botanicals to create natural prints. Printing from the Garden opens the doors to wonder and possibility; the only limit is your imagination.”
“Printing from the Garden is a gorgeous eco-printing book that shows how to capture beautiful flowers and foliage to impart lasting and breathtaking results on fabric, clothing and paper. Alison Kelly offers step-by-step instructions and practical advice to bring backyard botanical creativity into your life. A must have guide for designers, gardeners and makers!”
JOIN ALISON EACH MONTH IN THE FLORA OBSCURA ATELIER SERIES
The Atelier Series unfolds as an immersive, studio-based experience within this site’s membership space, paired with a live Zoom gathering each month. Inside, each chapter reveals a thoughtfully crafted studio guide filled with recipes, resources, techniques, and an open Q&A—inviting you to explore, create, and deepen your practice at your own pace.
To enter the Atelier, you’ll begin by purchasing access through this website— in monthly installments or the “full atelier” for a discount.
Afterward, you’ll be invited to create your personal login—your key to the studio. Once inside, a private space opens: a living archive of the work we’ll move through together.
Each month reveals its own chapter, with carefully gathered resources, guidance, and important dates. You can return to the studio anytime, moving at your own rhythm, letting your practice unfold.
About THE AUTHOR
Alison Kelly is an artist guided by the quiet intelligence of the natural world and a deep devotion to untamed beauty. Her path has wound through sun-drenched ateliers in San Miguel de Allende, where she studied fine art, weaving, and silversmithing, and into the vibrant color traditions of Oaxaca City, where she first witnessed the alchemy of natural dye — indigo blooming into midnight blue, cochineal unfolding into impossible crimson. It forever changed her understanding of color as something alive.
Fashion school in Florence refined her eye for silhouette and structure, while time in New York City during Project Runway immersed her in a world where creativity and pressure danced side by side. Still, she found herself drawn back — again and again — to the seductive colors of flora.
Today, Alison creates with living botanicals, capturing their fleeting grace in textiles, prints, and botanical formulations. Through her workshops, she shares this process of natural dyeing and botanical printing, inviting others to experiment and rediscover beauty as something carefully cultivated — not manufactured.
