Over a thousand visitors came to Seedy Saturday on 1st February 2025. They came to swap seeds, find out about community growing projects, and join in workshops and talks (see below for details of this year’s talks). Seedy Saturday is run and organised entirely by volunteers.
We had over 40 stalls selling an extensive range of usual and unusual seeds and plants, seed potatoes, shallots, reconditioned garden tools, metal plant supports, and hand crafted bird boxes
Peter May demonstrated how to care for and sharpen garden tools, Susanna Longley and Lisa Dear ran rush mat making workshops, and there were lots of activities for children too.
Visitors enjoyed chatting with friends over delicious, warming soup and hot snacks made by Seven Sisters Spices and sumptuous homemade cakes by Hamsey Community Primary School PTA and enjoyed the delightful tunes of Keith Ellis of Moving Sounds playing with Harry’s Tricks.
For the first time since Seedy Saturday began in 2007 we raised the entrance fee to £2 for adults (children were free). Talks and workshops were free. The rise was to cover increased costs of hall hire, publicity, speakers and workshop fees. Seedy Saturday remained a cash event. Thank you to everyone who came prepared with your coins.
We had exceptional talks as ever this year:
“A wilder Way to Grow Vegetables” Suzi Turner and Rosanna Catterall.
Suzi Turner, deputy head gardener at Knepp, talked about growing vegetables and flowers in the walled garden redesigned in 2019 in keeping with Knepp's pioneering rewilding project: “We’ve taken what we’ve learnt from the wider rewilding project to spark a new way of thinking about how a garden can function as a dynamic ecosystem”. Rosanna Catterall helped transform a 3 acre paddock at Knepp into a productive, organic market garden. She talked about growing seasonal veg for diversity and flavour and the merits and challenges of no dig and low till growing. “We’re always aiming to have living roots in the soil, keeping the surface covered with a wide range of plants to help build topsoil and protect it from the drying sun, wind, and excessive rain”. Both growers dug into the dilemmas of how to grow productively alongside often competing demands for productivity, aesthetics, and biodiversity.
“The Good Life?” What happens when you turn your passion for growing organically into your day job? Collete Pavledis, Ashurst Organics, has been growing organically and delivering veg locally for over 30 years. Battling the weather, slugs, weeds and ‘The Market’ - the talk was a verbal Bayeux tapestry of what it is to be ‘Living the Dream’ which can too often feel like a nightmare. Collette’s talk, titled “The Good Life?”, with reference to the BBC’s 1975 sitcom, wove her own personal life choices into the bigger picture and the battle for the global food system. Collette recounted the “joys and woes of trying to make a living from agroecological farming, whilst trying to save the Planet – one turnip at a time”. What now for Ashurst? And where now for the future of food in an increasingly volatile world?
