Gardening...

I'm excited about actually being around to garden this year. I do some every year, but since I've been moving around so much it's been limited for a while. I have no plans for moving, should be around the majority of the spring, summer, and fall, and have space to do pretty much whatever I want. However, the space is sort of daunting. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I'm planning on sharing a garden with my parents, so we will decide on vegetables together, and do the maintenance together. I'm trying to decide if there is anything special I want to grow in separate spaces.  I want to have a kitchen herb garden next to the house / in containers on the deck. There are vegetables and herbs for indian, thai, and medieval foods that I am interested in trying, but I'll probably stick to the ones easiest to grow this year. I might like to try growing some plants specifically for dying. In the long-term, I would really like to make a medieval style segmented garden, but that is a long-term project and not my priority this year, so I think I'll just try out some of the plants and perhaps start clearing the ground for future projects like this.

I also want to try growing flax for processing into fiber. This seems like the sort of thing I can start out now and will take a bit of time over an extended period until it's time to deal with processing it, so it's probably something I can handle. Does anyone have experience growing flax? I'd like to know where you get your seeds and any things I should keep in mind while planning out whereto put it...

Also, who grows plants for dying? I'm most interested in medieval stuff, since that's our geek, but I'm open to more. I haven't done a ton of dying, but am interested in paving the way to doing it in the future now that I have more of my own space.  

Oh yeah, and what are your favorite sources for heirloom seeds and plants?