Seedy Bankers

Wakehurst Place, North of Haywards Heath , is set in idyllic countryside. Here the National Trust house is beautified by its beds brimming with daffodils and pestomons, soon to be followed by smmer's flowers. Its partner a Seedy Banker -the Millennium Seed Bank -won't be in the People but working with peoples worldwide. The Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) has an extraordinary mission to save the seeds of the world for generations to come.

They avoid the arrogance of colonial bankers by working in close partnership with local organisations worldwide enabling them to develop their own sustainable structures to save seeds for posterity. Some are shipped to the MSB, where the state of the art facilities enable seeds to be processed, dried and stored in unique conditions only avaIlable in an affluent country.

The MSB is part of The structure of Kew but despite the name , our group from Seedy Sunday did not have to queue as we went behind the scenes.

There we saw how seeds should really be stored , not just for a year, a decade or even a century, but potentially for thousands of years.

The seeds range from those that are so small that they are almost too small to be seen, to the largest seed known, Coco der Mer ,the size of a football.

There are literally thousands of different finely graded sieves to separate the seed from the chaff ,which are useful for seeds up to the size of a pea.

Some seeds cases only open in extrely hot conditions to respond to the opportunity to gow after a major fire. The MSB has to imitate these conditions with sophisticated blow lamps to harvest the seeds.

Once the seeds are sifted and sorted, they then have to be tested to see if 75% germinate and the batch of seeds is worth storing.The moisture then needs to be extracted from the surface of most seeds without killing the seeds themselves; this is relatively simple to do in isolation rooms that are at 15c or at 20c.The humidity is reduced to 20% and the seeds gradually lose most of their water content . In a home environment this can be done using silica gel or even dried rice in an air tight box.

The seeds are then placed in small containers that ,like the famous Bubushka dolls ,are placed one inside another, inside another.(see photos). These are kept in the concrete clad , flood proof, earthquake proof, bomb proof vaults in the depths of the Seed Bank.

As an additional precaution some seeds are now also being stored in liquid nitrogen vats ,in temperatures that plummet down to -190 C.

Dramatically there are some plants that are being grown to determine their genus and a few at Kew that flower every 50 or even 200 years for their rare seeds.

One of the most charming discoveries were the photographs, delightful batiques and fabric prints of seeds and the growing plants given as gifts by ther partners in Africa and Asia. It exemplifies a human touch and indicates an invaluable set of interpersonal relations ,in what is a highly skilled and scientific programme.

There are anecdotal stories of seeds being stored and forgotten in tin boxes in Britain for hundred of years. Luckily they have been found and dried seeds have been placed in the right conditions and have germinated . The MSB is not about good luck but about providing a heritage for future generations to value as a source of genetic diversity. It is a project for the world community yet one that all of us in Sussex can be proud of. It is so , so different from the self centred approach of so many other bankers.

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