A labour of love - Hael Natural Colour.

A quiet but powerful collaboration between people, plants, and place. Hael Natural Colour founded in 2024 is a dye studio and organic farm in the Welsh countryside. Working within a soil-to-soil system of textile production photographed by Hayleigh.

Hael Natural Colour is a dye studio and organic farm in the Welsh countryside, founded in January 2024 by Ffion and Rufus, both generational farmers returning to their agricultural roots. Ffion comes from a line of dairy farmers and Rufus’s grandmother served in the Land Army. Together, they are reviving ancestral practices through a contemporary lens  blending art, farming, and climate activism.

Working within a soil-to-soil system of textile production, everything they produce begins and ends in the earth.Focusing on materials that can be returned to the soil, closing the loop of making and regeneration. Their work aligns with a broader movement that, like organic farming or renewable energy, seeks climate-positive alternatives to extractive systems. While sustainable food and energy have entered the mainstream, fashion still lags behind. The UK’s natural dye industry remains small-scale and inaccessible which Hael farm aims to begin to change. 

Ffion and Rufus’s practices complement one another in a delicate and interdependent rhythm. Rufus grows the plants and tends the land, while Ffion transforms the harvest into vibrant pigments and dyed fabrics. Their collaboration is a labour of love where growth and care come together. 

By growing dye plants, creating mordanted fabrics, and developing workshops, a Dye CSC (Community Supported Colour), and public projects across schools and farms, they’re building a more resilient, transparent, and accessible supply chain. The labour, and growth remains unseen as the project continues to evolve, its story unfolds through the rhythms of the land.