Collection: Potting Shed Creations

Potting Shed Creations Garden Kits and Seed Collections

A packet of seed makes a thin gift. It turns up as a bare envelope with no occasion attached to it, no sense of when to sow, and nothing to sow it in. Every kit in the Potting Shed Creations range that holds seed answers some part of that, and each of those ships with written growing directions. What varies is how much of the growing setup comes in the box — and one kit here carries no seed at all, because its job is to help you keep your own.

Scatter Gardens: choose the visitor, skip the planting plan

Broadcast seeding removes the part of wildflower planting most people stall on: no rows to lay out, no spacing to work out. Scatter a pre-mixed blend over prepared ground and let it come up. Each bag measures 7 1/4 inches high by 3 1/2 inches wide and holds seed and growing directions, so the ground is yours to supply.

The Honeybee blend is twenty flower varieties chosen for their beauty and their pull on honeybees. Timing is the thing to get right: in cool climates sow in spring, early summer or late fall — late enough that the seed will not germinate until spring — and in mild climates sow in fall. The Butterfly blend is nineteen varieties, each one picked to widen the range of nectars on offer to butterflies and other beneficial insects. It is made in the USA and carries enough seed to cover 125 square feet.

Tree-to-Be: a seedling with your handwriting on the tag

Each Tree-to-Be arrives in a jute bag measuring 9.5 by 8.5 inches, holding tree seed, a coir seedling pot, soil-less growing medium, a saucer, growing directions and an aluminum tag for a personalized inscription. The tag is why these get bought to mark a housewarming, a new baby or a life: it stays with the tree.

The Apple kit starts from Ralls Janet seed (Malus pumila) — medium to large fruit, thin greenish-yellow skin under pinkish-red striping, fine-grained flesh that ripens in October and keeps unusually well. Seed-grown fruit can differ from the parent in size, color and taste, which is the bargain you strike with any apple raised from seed. The Yule kit raises a Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris), the pyramidal evergreen native to northern Europe and one of the most popular Christmas trees there is: dark green needles, a pine aroma that lasts, and 7 to 8 feet of growth in six to eight years from seedling. Its saucer is metal where the Apple kit's is terracotta.

Two steel cases: one you plant, one you fill

Growing Wishes Flower Garden: Six flower varieties, each paired with the sentiment its beauty carries — sweet pea for friendship, lavender for happiness, forget-me-not for love, daisy for clarity, pinks for strength, baby's breath for joy. Seed, garden markers, a pencil and directions travel in a recycled steel case 5.5 inches wide by 3.5 inches deep. Sow it into a bed or into containers; soil is not part of the kit.

Gardener's Seed Saving Kit: The one kit here that holds no seed, because it is built for keeping your own. Its recycled steel case carries seed tins, glassine envelopes with labels to personalize and trade, date and variety labels, a harvest and processing chart, stakes, a pencil and seed saving instructions rather than growing directions. The method it lays out is short: collect from mature, disease-free plants once the fruit has ripened completely, let the seed dry before it goes into anything, then store it in the airtight tins labelled with variety and harvest date. Done properly, a favorite plant carries over to next season and the season after that.