Pick n' Mix

On seeds & space

[ This is a long post, so you may need to click through to read it online. Also, I am experimenting with image galleries. Let me know what you think. ]

I had forgotten (no great surprise since I have only done it once before) the magic of gently placing a tiny freckle of a seed onto soil with a fingertip. Cosmos seeds, curved and hard like a fingernail clipping, pushed into fine seed compost. Phlox, like a perfect polka dot booped into a small, fibre pot.

[ The first sowing, Daisy Barn. 11 May 2025 ]

The process of filling the pot with soil, placing the seed, and covering over (in my case) with vermiculite, scribbling out a label, and placing the pot on a tray, then repeating and repeating, is pure meditation.

That said, my mind was an explosion of fireworks and lightening, imagining the towering cosmos, the vivid cornflowers, the pincushion scabious, and the jewel-like nigella as I gently placed each tiny, magical seed.

And then I caught myself mid-way through the task and realised: I’m doing it!

Last year was the first time (as far as I can remember) that I had sown a seed. I had NO idea what I was doing. The hours of Create Academy courses, the further hours of YouTube research, and all the books and blogs did not, in fact, give me confidence. This is something that you can only really learn by doing.

[ Trays of seeds everywhere, Battersea. April 2024 ]

I sowed so, so, so many seeds. The counters of my Battersea kitchen were covered in soil and trays for weeks - months! - and my tiny garden simply could not accommodate the size and fervour of my ambition. It was then that the intense longing for a greenhouse and for space really began.

Having already filled my borders, I bought and built a metal raised bed to use as my ‘cutting garden’. I had sown so many things - 27 varieties of cosmos alone! - that of course most did not survive, but I nonetheless ended up with bunches and bunches of cut flowers all summer long.

[ Cutting bed, Battersea: 20.05.24, 22.06.24, 07.07.24 14.07.24, 15.08.24, 21.08.24 31.08.24, 16.09.24 ]

It became my routine to wake up, go out into the garden with a bucket of water, and pick flowers each day. In late summer I spent a few days in my favourite place on earth (Devon). The first morning I woke up missing my flower picking routine and googled ‘pyo flower farm devon’ or something. Nearby to where I was staying was The Lychgate Cutting Garden and so off I went, with the dogs in tow.

It was late August and much of the selection was past its best, yet the dahlias were not yet in full bloom. The timing was suboptimum. But it was one of my favourite days of the year.

The cutting garden is on the same plot as the most extraordinary plant nursery I’ve ever been to, Hill House Nursery. They vast greenhouses full of plants to buy and admire. It is a shame that the tearoom (and its staff) are not nicer, but otherwise it is a place that I would (and will) travel across the country to visit.

[ Lychgate Cutting Garden, Devon. 26.08.2024 ]

I came away with zinnias in potent shades of pinks and yellow, like a pack of school highlighters, with trails of amaranth like a perfect string of multicoloured pompoms, and with a dream of one day having a cutting garden like this all of my own.

And so there I was, just stopping for a moment between packets of cosmos and cornflowers, to think: I’m DOING IT!

[ Picked my own, Devon. 26.08.2024 ]

This week at the Barn I have fallen in love with space. Not the Elon Musk kind, but the having of abundant space. Not only is it HUGELY much easier to build IKEA flatpack, do laundry, make the bed, and recycle, when you have space, but it feels… luxurious. I can spread a blanket out on the grass and have both dogs beside me, and there is nothing else nearby. I don’t quite know how to explain it. It feels as if I have been… unbound. Loosened. I can stretch out. I am luxuriating in having space. Bathing in it. Basking in it. Glorying in it. Rolling in it.

I adore my London garden and I am missing it beyond what is reasonable (I have to distract myself when I start to think what I might be missing), and I particularly love its walls, but here there are no walls. There is space, and more space and, beyond that, space.

[ One of many posies picked from the garden, Battersea. 03.09.24 ]

And as the feeling of ‘I’m doing it’ dawned alongside the feeling of the blissfulness of having space, I was suddenly taken by a surge of madness. I CAN PLANT AS MANY SEEDS AS I WANT.

Luckily I quite quickly ran out of pots and seed compost, and also luckily something distracted me before I could hit ‘buy now’ on an order of over 200 seed varieties I had in my basket on Chiltern Seeds, and also I could only afford two raised beds to plant out my seedlings, but believe me, as soon as funds allow I am going to buy a LOT more seeds and a LOT more pots and compost. And I will grow a JUNGLE of flowers for cutting and I will have even MORE types of Cosmos, and SEVERAL different phlox, and ALL THE ZINNIAS.