GET GROWING!

EVERY GARDEN CONTAINS THE PROMISE OF MANY GARDENS WITHIN ITSELF

“My euphorbia patch from a couple of years ago. I’m hoping to revive it with seeds from a friend’s garden.”

By LADYBUG

As fall burnishes our world all shades of copper, gold and red, the mums and asters in my garden come into their own.

The Michaelmas daisies my gardening buddy Linda gave me are a riot of pink. Mums from another garden buddy Amy, a pale, creamy yellow. And tall ones from my gardening guru Dorothy, a burnt orange while asters add a shot of saturated purple.

While I delight in all the colour, I’m also very aware of this last hurrah as I turn to the task of putting my garden to bed for winter. Cutting down plants – but leaving some with seedheads for the birds – dividing large clumps of some and moving them to other parts of the garden to give them a head start for next spring or gifting some to friends.

And collecting seeds. Drying them and saving them in bottles and packets labelled not just with the name but the year is a pleasurable, almost meditative garden ritual.

Thus I dig into The Seed Hunter with joy and a sense of recognition.

Mitch McCulloch writes that as a child he collected stickers and Pokémon cards, as a chef, he collected unusual recipes and now, he tracks down rare and unusual fruit and vegetable seeds to grow in his garden.

“Seeds are the basis of all life. They represent past, present, and future.”

His garden in Hampshire is the average size of a UK backyard, he writes. Accompanying photographs show a space packed with plants of all kinds and all sizes.

“A garden can be a rich mix of habitats to encourage biodiversity as well as productivity,” he shares, and advises starting with a vision of what you want to achieve in your garden.

“For me, it’s creating an alluring, immersive area planted with rare and exciting food crops, with copious flowers to add beauty and make a more well-rounded ecosystem.”

And then he goes about showing readers how to achieve that dream.

Starting with sane, practical tips on how little you actually need to maintain a garden.

A comprehensive seed-sower’s calendar is a great guide for when to get which crop started – keeping in mind, of course, that McCulloch gardens in England and his gardening year starts much earlier than ours!

Seed-sowing, seedling care, and after care, you’ll find tips on all, along with weeds, pests and disease control. I’m surprised to find birds and butterflies listed under common pests, but then birds do peck at young shoots. And butterflies, as he points out helpfully, lay eggs!

The section on companion planting shows how “growing small numbers of different crops and pollinator-friendly flowers together reduces the risk of disease and pest infestation”.

But, of course, seeds are what the book is about and I’m absorbed in the section on how to save the seeds of different varieties including the six easiest.

His tips include:

• Only save seed from open (naturally) pollinated varieties. Hybrids will not grow true to the parent.

• Always save seed from the healthiest plant with the best fruit. When we save seeds, we become part of the process of natural selection, so choose wisely.

• Give fruit that is being harvested for seed time to ripen completely on the plant to ensure the seeds are fully mature.

• If you’re unsure about the likely germination rates of your home-saved seeds, perform a basic germination test by placing a few seeds inside a folded damp paper towel to see if they spring into life.

The Seed Hunter by Mitch McCulloch is published by DK, $54.

And just like that, not only does the reader’s connection to the garden grow, saving seeds becomes a greater responsibility, one not to be taken lightly.

I recall a recent exchange with Linda. I reached out to ask how her Snow-on-the-mountain (euphorbia) was doing. My happy patch that was the envy of my neighbours had dwindled to near-disappearance over a couple of summers of other plants claiming its space. She said hers was flourishing and has promised to save seeds for me.

Seeds from her garden will rejuvenate mine.