The magic of collecting and saving seed

While I watch my flower garden melt away for the winter in all its blotchy, yellowing, mildewy glory, it’s hard to ignore the fuzzy, graphic balls floating above the leafy mess.

For first-time gardeners, it’s easy to miss the gold to be found at this time of year when you lament that your lovely outside space isn’t actually static. This is our “lesson” time, after the glory of the blooms and a reminder that you are working within a moving medium that waits for no-one.

Looking through seed heads of phlomis and rudbeckia back to the house.

“Seed heads are fascinating things. All architectural and intricate in their design, with the sole aim of survival of their species. They literally want to “spread their seed” and ensure their legacy of future plant babies from their family line. Mind-blowing when you think about the science of it all.”

Seeds are also a currency for gardeners. Envelopes of seed are traded in return for others, sold, stored, germinated undercover, or just flung at soil with fingers crossed. Growing your own flowers equals the opportunity to grow even more in the future at no cost, just a little effort and forward-planning.

I am the first to admit that I find the process of preparing seed trays, sowing and pampering seedlings to success a little laborious, but it was my first purchase of seed that showed me the giant creative potential of curating a garden and ignited a thirst to hunt out and grow the weird and wonderful.

Verbena bonariensis pushing its new blooms upward while simultaneously developing ripe seed below it. This powers its incredible self seeding abilities to beware of!

With my initial learning heavily based in UK gardening books and inspiration from northern hemisphere gardens, I noticed the reoccurring mention of Verbena bonariensis. A tall, airy perennial plant with long cylindrical stems topped with purple puffs of tiny flowers. Romantic when weaving through perennial borders and truly modern when grown as an abundant stand on its own.

I couldn’t find it in my local garden centres and neither at the independent nurseries I was discovering online. So, Trade Me it was and after much monitoring, finally I got a hit from Hawke’s Bay. The seeds arrived with a lovely handwritten note and I set about germinating them in trays.

They were so slow to get going, the slowest of anything I’ve grown since. By summer, the stand was taller than me and an instant talking point for anyone that visited. Bees and butterflies swarmed it and, by its second season, I was thrilled to witness it begin flowering in early summer and continue right through autumn.

VB (as I like to call it) is particularly clever in that it continues to push new flowers forward, while below, spent blooms have already set seed and are drying on the plant and dropping… everywhere. By mid-season two, I witnessed the swarm of seedlings popping up in all areas of my garden, pots, cracks in the concrete – literally everywhere. None of my other plants have such a will to live on like VB and I have learnt now to recognise its tiny, red-stemmed seedlings so I can get them under control early. Rampant would be its middle name and I feel a responsibility to not let it escape my garden for the wilds of my neighbourhood.

This success, albeit a little more impressive than I bargained for, gave me confidence to grow more. My first echinacea and rudbeckia were grown from seed purchased online and I now have established plants that I can easily dig up and divide. I enjoy ordering gorgeous annuals to mix it up each season and am grateful for the polite self-seeding of some of my favourites like Knautia macedonica and dahlias.

“Apricot Lemonade” cosmos (from Susie Ripley Gardening) in varying stages of bloom and seed head development.

Testing an echinacea seed head for ripeness. The seeds are easily pulling out as a gently run my nail over the top of the spikes.

I’ve learned to be patient and let the seed heads dry out on the plant long after they look attractive, testing their ripeness by running my thumb lightly over their heads. If the seeds easily pull out easily, I then snip off the whole head and pop it in an envelope to process later. Sometimes, much, much later, I have piles of envelopes with collected seed that I have never done anything with, but couldn’t bear to let “go to waste”.

Fresh seed has a much better chance of germination than old seed, so it’s best not to store for years. Like all the books say, seed needs to be stored in a dry situation which is why breathable paper is a good option. As first timers, you will discover that the seed heads you collect aren’t simply made up of the precious bits, they are also full of flaky, protective husks (referred to as chaff), which can add confusion.

Separating your seed from chaff isn’t my favourite task either, but I did stumble upon an efficient, old technique called winnowing. This is a process based on the fact that lighter substances will blow away before heavier ones, and, in this case, seeds are heavier than husks. Use your fingers to break down the seed heads into a shallow bowl and very gently blow into your seed “material”. Like magic, the lightweight husks slowly fly away over the edges, leaving a well-sorted pile of seed at the bottom ready to use as you wish. This might not be an effective method for large-scale seed collectors, but for home gardeners, it’s a pretty basic and easy option.

So take solace in the end of your seasonal display and look now towards the seed heads, their crazy structures and the potential they hold for a fuller garden next year.

This article was first featured in my Stuff ‘Homed’ gardening column for beginners and The Press on April 22nd 2021
All words are my own, and images photographed in my own garden in Christchurch, New Zealand.