Seeds - the 2023 edit
I sat down to write this about a week ago. I thought it would take half an hour or so. I was still writing a day and a half later. If I was ever on Mastermind, this would very much be my specialist subject. What didn’t take me very long was to find all the links for you. I think I have tabs open for 90% of these companies.
Obviously, these are all for flower and vegetable seeds that I don’t stock. In the middle of the big spring rush, I am full time packing and posting, but there are plenty for everyone. If you always want to be doing your big sow in early March, I am doing same day dispatch for the rest of the month.
Too long: Didn’t read:
Best for finding what you want and for the lovely basics: Chiltern Seeds
Best for things you have never heard of: Plant World Seeds
Best for interesting perennials (European based but happy to ship to UK & elsewhere in EU): Jelitto
Best for biodynamic, organic &/or open pollinated in UK: Seed Cooperative, Vital Seeds
Best for Ireland & Northern Ireland: Seedaholic
Best for biodynamic & Europe: Bingenheimer Saatgut
Best for America: Row 7 Seed Company, 3 Porch Farm, Johnny’s seeds
Also, look for National Collections for the plants that you are interested in and see if you are able to source unusual, rare or just interesting seeds from them.
The image below is from the Row 7 seed website. It is one of the most amazing websites I have ever seen and I am very cross indeed that they do not ship to the UK (they are based in New York) especially as when I logged into Jane Scotter’s course on biodynamic vegetable growing, I saw that she had a packet of their seed on her potting bench. I have heard her mention that she buys in a lot of American seed and Johnny’s seeds will post seed to the UK if it is not agricultural, so flowers but not beans or wheats or, strangely, sunflowers. My honest view is that there is pretty much nothing you can get from them
Best for everything:
the seeds you save yourself
It is not going to come as a great surprise to you that I buy a lot of seeds and I can sniff out a good seed merchant like a pig can find a truffle. I go to different people for different things. Some are quick fixes, just a little hit of seed-buying dopamine. Others are more like trawling the stalls of Portobello Road, sifting through all the noise until that perfect plant just jumps out. Small, exquisite orders of very, very special seeds.
Everything is gearing up for the big March sow now. I am going to sow the second wave of all my flowers on 2nd March. It is a weekend and so I am not at work. It is a biodynamic flower day, and it is just before a full moon (the Worm Moon is 7th March). All the forces will align for strong, generous germination and for resilient, happy, healthy plants. And healthy plants mean buckets and buckets of flowers and a full pantry. Essential in these crazy times. This is early in the month though. If you don’t have heat or space under glass, or it is very cold where you are, I would push it out until 30th March. There are a solid few flower days around then and you will catch the forces of the Pink Moon on 5th April .
Indeed, if your horizons extend beyond blooms and to your stomach, Sunday afternoon is auspicious for leaves, and I will be sowing kale and chard. Although I have both still growing in the kitchen garden, both are biennials and, as they are coming into their second year, they are all thinking about sending up a flower spike. The kohlrabi is already flowering and I will use it like purple sprouting broccoli which, for the fourth year in a row, I forgot to sow at the right time.
I will pull them all soon and make Anna Jones’ double greens pie, then clear the ground for the next crops. Tuesday March 15th is a fruit day so peas and beans and the like. Tomatoes if you haven’t already done them. I am itching to get my pumpkins and squash in, but I must resist until mid-April.
Best for finding what you want: Chiltern Seeds
Like a child in a Fortnum and Mason sweet shop, my eyes can barely take in how many tempting options there are. My garden suddenly seems too small to fit in all the wonderful options. I try and keep a rein on my horticultural acquisitions by using the following parameter; if I can eat it or cut it, it’s in. Chiltern have a way of searching for plants based on whether it is good for cutting, drying, good for pollinators and even, excitingly, perennials that flower in their first year. Good for the impatient amongst us.
The other thing that is really lovely about the Chiltern Seeds website is the photography. The images are all taken by the talented Sabina Rüber, who also shot the book ‘The Flower Garden’ by Clare Foster, who is the garden editor of House and Garden. Clare is also interviewing Rachel Siegfried (recent Gather interviewee) for her book launch at the Garden Museum in April. The book that Rachel wrote was photographed by Éva Németh - who is also a Gather expert… ok ok, I’ll stop now.
Everyone is connected to everyone in this world.
What I am trying this year from Chiltern Seeds:
(Images from their website, because I have only just sown mine)
Talinum paniculatum 'Verde', not for the pink flowers but for the red berries.
Clematis japonica
I am developing a bit of a clematis collection. Not the big blowsy ones, one can have too many C. montana and they do scramble so. However, the finer, bell-like varieties are exquisite and seeds for both the furry brown C. fusca (see below) and C. japonica ‘Hansho-zuru’ are chilling in the fridge as we speak. I have such high hopes.
Nicotiana ‘Tinkerbell’
I have had a few years off growing Nicotiana. I had a job lot of the richly rusty red ‘Tinkerbell’ all come up white and I lost heart for a while. However, I have been tempted back. What I truly desired were the incredibly dark ‘Hot Chocolate’ or ‘Chocolate Smoke’ but they are almost impossible to get hold of in the UK. If you are a US member, you lucky, lucky thing. I might also give N. ‘Bronze Queen’ a trial this season, but I cannot believe it will be quite the same.
Best for things you have never heard of: Plant World Seeds
I used to do a lot of family assessments and court appearances in Newton Abbot and Torquay. There is a big road that sweeps down over the southernmost tip of Dartmoor and climbs so you can just see the sea, and then drops down to a roundabout with a big Sainsburys. Turn left instead of right to town, wind up some unfeasible narrow lanes and you come to Plant World. Now, without seeming to brag, I know my plants. I can name most things in most gardens and be able to offer some tip or useful fact about at least half of them. The first time I stopped off at Plant World, I felt like I had landed on a different planet. It has that slightly West Country jungle feel which didn’t help my sense of orientation, but there were rows and rows and rows of plants I did not recognise. Names I didn’t know. Flowers I had never seen before. Leaf shapes that seemed strange and alien. I had to have a sit down and a coffee and cake in their cafe to recover myself. But once I did, my eyes were opened. I came home with one of my favourite plants ever, a brown, furry, flower looking like nothing else but a rabbit’s ears, Clematis fusca. I have never seen it anywhere else, and I probably never shall. The one plant I bought from them a few years ago isn’t enough; I have just ordered some seeds.
My list from them this February was extensive (there were five sorts of aquilegia, and five campanula), so I will restrict myself to telling you about just three.
Lilium formosanum var. pricei
I have been obsessed with Lilium formosanum since I saw a photograph on Saipua’s Instagram about ten years ago. I hate lilies generally and wouldn’t give them houseroom, but the chocolate stripe of this one seduced and captivated me. I consider it a significant sadness in my life that I cannot source either bulbs or seeds for them, even for ready money. I have to content myself with Lilium formosanum var. pricei. The difference? Size. L. formasanum is four foot tall, and L. formosanum var. pricei is, to my eternal disappointment, a dwarf.
Six inches at best.
I bought seeds anyway, for the fourth year running.
Image by Sarah Ryhanen
Omphalodes linifolia
I can take or leave forget me nots. Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ redeems itself by coming so early in the season where I am so desperate for blooms that I would take anything. Even blue flowers. Now imagine all the gorgeous things about forget me nots (perfect, tiny, classic flower shape) but on cleaner stems and white. I grew Omphalodes, also rather sensuously known as Venus’ navelwort, many years ago and then slowly forgot about it. This year, I am going to be remembering it, and putting it centre stage in pots in the courtyard. Because I have no restraint and even though I am often rude about any flower bluer than tweedia, I got a packet of the sky blue variety, O. nitidia.
I have gone huge on aquilegias this year. Mostly because they love my soil and self-seed abundantly, thus guiding me to take the hint on ‘right plant, right place’ but also because, having developed the knack of pre-chilling, I have worked out how to germinate them with great efficiency. This one is burnished rose and I am particularly excited about the doubleness of it. Isn’t it gorgeous? I just know the greenfly are going to love it too.
Image by Sarah Ryhanen (I don’t know the variety so I am growing every single one I can get my hands on)
Talking of aquilegia, I have discovered a new way of tapping into really amazing seed sellers. Did you know that we have a National Collection of most plants? These are enthusiastic plantspeople who go deep on one particular type of plant and who are truly expert about that one thing. I was wondering if I could visit the National Collection of aquilegia to save me growing all the seed that I could buy just to see what it turned out like, and I came across Touchwood, the garden of Carrie Thomas. And guess what, she sells her seed.
If you are interested in a particular variety of anything, it is worth researching who holds the national collection and seeing if they share either seed or plants. A word of warning: once you go down this rabbit hole, I cannot promise you will be able to stop. In researching this article, I discovered that Jonathan Sheppard holds the National Collections for both Cosmos bipannatus and hollyhocks, and so I bought a bag of mixed hollyhocks. I discovered Dr Andrew Ward’s collection of more Astrantia than I knew existed and it was only the fact that their order book was full that stopped me adding an A. 'Berendien Stam' to my perennial beds.
Even more worrying is that I discovered that Plant Heritage are looking for someone to develop a National Collection of campanulas. I filled in an application form…
Which brings me to:
Best for interesting perennials: Jelitto
A secret generally only known to head gardeners to the rich and famous (it was Joshua Sparkes that put me on to them), Jelitto is renowned for interesting and unusual perennials. I find their method for ordering quantities obscure and I never know if I am going to get three seeds or three thousand, but they are always incredible quality and they stock things that no one else does, including the most exclusive and highbrow ‘sow and throw’ mixes. Their mixed colours one is the result of research carried out in the Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield, and was created by Professor James Hitchmough and trialled by the RHS in beds at Wisley. Not your average garden centre box.
More conservatively, I went for some luscious looking double chestnut brown hollyhocks, and Bupleurum longifolium 'Bronze Beauty'. Bupleurum is always a nightmare to germinate because the seeds has to be so fresh*, but if I get just one plant out of it, then it will keep me in seed forever.
Also, they stock seventeen sorts of Thalictrum. Apparently, there isn’t a National Collection of Thalictrum either, but I haven’t worked out how to grow that reliably from seed so I won’t volunteer for that one just yet.
Best for surprises: Special Plants
*Going back to the idea of fresh. Only one seed merchant I know takes this really really seriously. Derry Watkins builds up an order book and then, right at the moment the seed is ripe, gets it all in the post with instructions to sow it immediately. Derry has a wonderful garden very close to Damson Farm near Bath, and even closer to Dan Pearson’s gorgeous garden, Hillside. I heard a rumour that when Derry is invited round to Hillside for coffee and a chat, she collects seed heads as she brushes past Dan’s famously soft planting, tucks them into her pockets, and her seed shop contains some very interesting varieties as a result.
Pretty much everything else is from her own garden. If you can fit in a visit, do, particularly if you can time it with one of Derry’s own tours. It truly is a beautiful spot. This year, I have ordered seeds for a long coveted Eryngium pandanifolium 'Physic Purple' and some deep rust coloured cinnabar tagetes that she got from Great Dixter.
Best for edibles
I would adore to only grow (and sell) organic and biodynamic seed and that is very much the goal but for flowers, I do tend to put interest first. (I grow the seed on using organic principles obviously.) With edible however, they need to be organic all the way through. Luckily, there are some amazing people producing wonderful varieties of vegetables using the most ethical and sustainable methods. They are, in a very real sense, at the frontline of our seed sovereignty and therefore out sustainability.
Vital Seeds is, of course, wonderful. I did think that I had more than enough vegetable seed to get me through this season but I just received an email from Vital Seeds about the different types of chicory that they have seed for this year. This one is utterly gorgeous but is for forcing (growing on in complete darkness), and I am not sure I am ever going to get round to doing that properly. Do you think a rhubarb cloche would work?
If you want lots and lots of seed, I strongly recommend Seed Cooperative. I got much of the seed for the Kitchen Garden collections from them and it is always excellent. I also highly recommend having a general look around their website; they are a community owned business and are active in promoting biodynamic practices in both gardening and seed growing.
Best for Europe
If you are in Europe and find it tricky getting seeds out of the UK, I am a great fan of the German biodynamic company, Bingenheimer Saatgut, recommended to me by Charles Dowding. They used to send me seeds but Brexit has finally put paid to that and now they kindly redirect me to Vital Seeds.
America
If you are in America, you are the object of envy. There are so many I can’t get my hands on which I would adore to. Row 7 seeds particularly. Have you ever seen anything so incredible? Also, the wonderful 3 Porch Farm has seeds for all sorts of wonderful and interesting looking varieties of flowers including, be still my beating heart, seeds for the elegantly tall Formosa lily…
Image by 3 Porch Farm
And so there you go, a tour around the global network of seed merchants. I am due to start my course in seed saving (practice and politics) in a month and so expect me to get militant about saving your own. There is a bean specialist who very clearly says that you get to buy varieties once and then you are on your own with keeping your own supply going; they won’t welcome you back for a second order. I am not that strict, but the general policy stands. because after all, isn’t that the magic of seeds? You get a speck of something tiny, you turn it, Jack and the Beanstalk style, into something utterly wonderful, and then all by itself, it gives you hundreds and thousands of seeds to do it all over again, but bigger and better.