Until 50 years ago, saving your own seed was an integral part of gardening for most vegetable gardeners. Knowledge of how to save seeds has drastically been lost by amateur gardeners and today many of us blindly buys them in packets from a seed supplier year after year.

The positive news is that there are organisations working hard to change that. One of them is the London Freedom Seed Bank. We had the opportunity to attend the Seed Bank Network get-together which took place in St.Luke’s Community Centre, London back in May. The evening featured talks by network members who spoke about their seed saving journeys and reasons to join the Network. Amongst those speakers was Helen Schulze, co-director of London Freedom Seed Bank, writer and editor, who shared her Master’s research on UK seed savers and you will be able to hear at the end of the episode.

After the event, we spoke with Charlotte, who runs the Seed Bank. She told us what inspired the creation of the Seed Bank, the political dimension of seed saving and how gardeners can benefiting from the organisation’s training programme. She also helped us understand the current UK Seed legislation, what hybrid or F1 seeds are and how they have completely changed modern agriculture.