3 hours ago
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Lots of pressure at this time of year, isn’t there? All those pink cheeks and sweaty brows puffing their way around the park in dusted-down trainers; all those Botivo mocktails (delicious, for what it’s worth) as we strive to self-improve during one of the most grisly months of the year. I’ve never really been one for resolutions, nor time-measured sobriety (amazing how having small children deflates one’s desire to drink enough to conjure a hangover). I prefer to believe that we should mirror what the outdoor world is doing at this time: namely hibernating in an attempt to store up energy for the warmer months that are to come.
Still, if you really feel you must do something vaguely horticultural at this time of year, can I suggest you get your seeds in order? I still think about a photograph I saw of Monty Don’s seed stash in a colour supplement years ago. It was housed in a pleasingly bashed-up vintage index-card cabinet, tucked against the wall of his potting shed – a building with more natural light and square footage than many flats I’ve lived in. How chic! How clever! How deliciously organised!
I set about making my own miniature version soon after, painting a set of six Ikea Moppe mini drawers a similar hue of earthy green. Each drawer was given a couple of months, and I sorted my unruly pile of seed packets into the months I’d be likely to sow them.
It soon became apparent that April and September each needed a drawer of their own, and there were all sorts of things among the stash that I wouldn’t be sowing on my tiny balcony or north-facing garden – broccoli, for instance, or rainbow chard. Which is when the capsule collection entered the fold: another box containing a ruthless edit of the seeds I was actually going to use – hardy annual flowers that do well sown direct; a handful of different varieties of poppy; sweet peas. You don’t need something new to do this – a shoebox would work.
This is a nice job for January because there’s not a lot else to do on those hangover-free weekends, and because it allows you to time travel through your imaginary garden of the year ahead. As you whittle through the rag-tag pile of promise – a wild carrot here, an Ammi majus there, some cornflowers in different shades of blue – it’s impossible not to conjure an image of what they could be, alive and growing. It’s a time, in a month made of light punishment, to shrug off the “shoulds” and select what you want to grow, what your gut tells you to, while allowing for a surprise packet or two that you may find along the way. In this way, seed-sorting is as close to a resolution as I get.
