The Great Seed Swap is back! After the success of our first ever Seed Swap, visitors can join us again for the biggest collection of seeds we’ve ever had in one place! RHS garden-collected seeds, rare and unusual Plant Heritage seeds, specialist seeds from some of our plant societies and hundreds of packets from our plant centre.
Growing from seed is an exciting and inexpensive way to fill your garden with annuals, perennials, edibles and even shrubs and trees. Visitors can join free talks throughout the day to learn more about the fascinating world of seeds, how to successfully collect and grow them and learn how to make your own seed collection envelopes to take away some treasures to sow at home.
Throughout the day, RHS Seed workroom will be open for a behind-the-scenes tour to see how the team harvests, dries, cleans and sends out seeds to members as part of the RHS Members’ Seed Scheme.
How can visitors share and take seed on the day?
If you have seed to swap, including home collected or unused/half used seed packets you can bring them along to the registration table. Home collected seed will be checked and labelled before being distributed to the swap tables. The ‘sow by’ date on packets of seed should be no older than 2023.
Please note:
- No seed from abroad is allowed
- Seed from plants collected in the wild (countryside, woodland, coastal, heathland etc.) is not allowed and, in many cases, illegal
- Seeds brought into the garden must be in sealed containers/ packets (envelopes, plastic bags, sealed plastic containers) and only opened in the event space.
Then you are free to browse through all the swap tables and choose your favourites to swap or take for a donation. Visitors with no seeds to swap can go straight to the swap tables to start choosing. There will also be sit-and-swap spaces where visitors can take time to choose, talk to some of our seed experts and chat about everything seed!
Please note that the seeds are intended for your own personal use, so please only take what you intend to grow in the following season and we suggest a maximum of 10 packets per visitor to ensure there is plenty of choice for everyone and they don’t go to waste.
Talks Schedule - details to be confirmed
10.45am The Wonderful World of Seed
11.30am The Heritage Seed Library - Katrina Fenton
12.15pm Collecting seed – How to collect, prepare and store your own seed
1pm How to sow seed – Learn how to sucessfully sow and grow on from seed
1.45pm Growing Veg from seed – Find out how to grow your own produce at home
2.30pm The Wonderful World of Seed
For more information contact
[email protected].
