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Sarah Moore shares her story of hope in a seed. She has a powerful command for beautiful writing. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing how she created such a colourful space in nature. Read on and enjoy
The art of a personal garden space
My garden is my space. I delight in checking on my plant-progeny; pruning back over-eager hedges and wayward branches; tidying borders; and teasing weeds out of the ground. Often I find myself wandering around the garden in the morning, coffee in hand, to see how things are progressing. Speaking softly to new arrivals. I encourage tender young shoots; dead-head geraniums. I water thirsty potted plants. And chastise the snails that dare to munch on my little plants.
I planted wildflower seeds mid-May this year. It was a bit late planting them. I’d picked up some boxes of mixed wildflower seeds before Lockdown. Nothing fancy, they weren’t expensive – I think I got them in Lidl.
One fine, sunny May morning I sewed the wildflower seeds. I read the somewhat-sparse guidelines on the box and got bored trying to plant them 10 centimetres apart. In the end I scattered them haphazardly all over the ground and covered them thinly with compost and soil. My expectations were relatively low. There was lots of bird activity at that time.
From shallow hope sprung a riot of colour
Nothing happened really for about 5 weeks. Then, what I hoped were not weeds, poked their green noses out of the soil. As the summer progressed, the flowers really started coming up. Probably planted a bit densely, but it worked out as some of them took longer to flower than others. They were a gaudy, showy kaleidoscope of colour, type and size. I was overjoyed. And my neighbours, out on their dutiful evening walks, commented on the lovely colours and how it brightened their walk each day.
I took such comfort in the number of bees, hoverflies and butterflies that visited my wildflowers. It gave me such a sense of hope and possibility.
Now Autumn slowly dulls the bright and cheery colours in my garden, yet the wildflowers plough on, seemingly unrelentless. And I’m discovering new pleasure in watching them as they progress through their cycle of growth and decline.
Passing on the joy in a simple wildflower seed
Every few days I gather brown seed heads from the wildflowers. They have to be left to dry for a day or two. Then the pods pop open and you can gently tease the little seeds out of the husks. It is not exactly fun but definitely satisfying! Each flower, that grew from a single seed, produces so many seeds! Fortunately I’ve collected hundreds now and the late flowering ones are still going to seed.
I collect them in empty yogurt pots and jam jars. I will sort them and label them (with photos as I don’t know what each flower is, except for the poppies). Eventually I’ll give them to friends and family and ask that they gather the seeds when the wildflowers are done flowering and to do the same, to pass them on. It seems like such a pay-it-forward thing to do. These days, it’s such a pleasure to see the reward of beginning, middle and end and from that a new beginning. A closed loop. Nature sustaining itself. Showing us the way.
Thanks Sarah for sharing about your garden!
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