University of Maryland Extensions (UME) Master Gardener Ann Coren is on a mission to reinvigorate interest in natural fibers that come from renewable plant sources, rather than petroleum-based products, teaching her community the importance of sustainablysourced linen and cotton.
Domestic laundry of polyester clothing contributes the majority of microplastic fiber pollution, with global emission estimates of 5.6 million tons entering the oceans, according to a 2024 study.
“Everybody wears clothes and they take it for granted-they don’t understand the societal and environmental impact of it,” said Coren. “The more people we talked to, the more we realized how little people know about their clothing.”
This led her to establish the Garden to Garment Fiber program, which allows participants to learn about growing flax and cotton, as well as the complicated processing to turn those raw agricultural products into fibers, and then thread or fabric.
Coren, a crafter and one of the founding members of the Chesapeake Fibershed, became interested in local fibers over three years ago when she began the practice of lacemaking in honor of her grandmother. Her interests in environmentalism and sustainable products led her to question why her cotton thread was derived from Egyptian sources, and she began researching if there were local substitutes available.
With the assistance of the sustainability group Transition Howard County, the Chesapeake Region Lace Guild, and support from the Community Ecology Institute at Freetown Farm, Coren began participating in a Chesapeake Fibershed pilot program that offered enough seed to sow a 10' x 10' plot with flax. She supplemented that with a small crop of white and green cotton seeds donated by a fellow UME Master Gardener.
Garden to Garment Fiber program participants are able to tour the pilot plot to see the production of local fibers, from the propagation stage of the annuals through farm tours to learn about growing, harvesting, and preparing the crop for fine processing into thread.
by Laura Wormuth
