Wild about Frome – Sewing the seeds of spring

Greetings everyone, it’s Kerry here from the Frome Seed Library, stepping in for the first of a series of seedy editions of the Wild Bunch column in the coming months.

For those of you unfamiliar with the seed library, let me give you a quick summary. It’s your friendly, local, permanent seed swap located in Frome Library. Here you’ll find a selection of seeds saved and donated by local gardeners and growers, all available for you to try. And the best part? It’s all free!

(We also occasionally wreak horticultural chaos in Frome Library with our children’s gardening club, Sprouts. But that’s a column for another day!)

As we stride into spring, armed with our seed catalogues, dizzy with anticipation for the gardening year ahead, I’m here to encourage you to perhaps sow something a little different this year and explore the possibilities of heritage seed.

As well as increasing genetic diversity within your garden (heritage seeds are open pollinated, meaning they haven’t been genetically tampered with, allowing them the scope for adaptability and therefore greater resiliency to climatic and environmental factors), many of these seeds carry stories, tracing their ancestry back decades, if not centuries.

A brilliant place to start on your heritage seed journey is the inspirational Heritage Seed Library (HSL), a charity set up in 1975 to help protect heritage seed.

The HSL currently grows 800 varieties of heritage seed which may have otherwise become extinct.

Alongside first-hand growers’ observations, you’ll find the story of how these seeds found their way into their library, and some of the stories are truly fascinating.

For example, Navy Bean Edmund was first cultivated during World War II as a prototype ‘baked bean’ to sustain Australian forces during the war, or the ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomato, first bred during the depression by a poor amateur gardener in the USA who then used the proceeds from his tomato sales to help other families through their hardship.

But of course, heritage or not, all seeds have stories to reveal, and we love nothing more than to hear why people have taken the time to share their saved seed with us. So, this year we thought we’d start some new seed stories in Frome, but we need your help.

We are inviting gardeners to take part in a community bean grow-off, growing heritage and unusual beans for a communal, pay-what-you-can autumnal feast with Canteen. We will provide the seeds and guidance but the rest will be down to you (and the weather…and the slugs…and the snails, etc).

If you’d like to take part in our heritage bean, seed-to-plate experiment, or would just like to know more about seedy stuff, please email us at fromeseedlibrary@gmail.com.

Join the Wild Bunch gathering on Thursday 17th April and extend the wildflower bed in Mary Baily field. Sign up at https://bit.ly/wild-bunch-apr-25.

Kerry, Frome Seed Library