When you buy the “Decolonize This Yard” native wildflower mix seed packet from Matiz Press in Chicago, you get much more than a lush garden. The packet, which is presented like a zine, has a rough-hewn, punky aesthetic. These “functional gardening tools and objects of political imagination,” designed by Miguel Limón, a Mexican American artist and the founder of Matiz, offer a creative way to acknowledge Indigenous land.
The humble seed packet, popularized by the Shakers in the late 18th century, was once adorned with romanticized lithographs of farm cornucopias. Recently it has undergone a dramatic makeover, powered in part by young gardeners who are anxious about climate change and increasingly averse to algorithmic slop.
Crafty social media users have been posting tutorials on how to make seed packets, like the ones a TikToker fashioned out of a paper grocery bag. And except for the most bespoke seed packets, they tend to cost about $5 or less. They turn something ephemeral (a small paper rectangle) into something you want to treasure — or at least post to social media.
Groovy Root, a new gardening company in Florida, sends off its seeds in packets with colorful designs and cheery cartoon planters reminiscent of 1970s children’s shows on public television. The Alaska pea, for example, features a pea plant juggling peas; a pot of chives holds a mirror while trimming its chive stalk “hair.”
“In a world that is on a fast track toward artificial everything, there are people who are naturally gravitating the other way,” Bella Berdnik, the company’s creator, said. Her website features a disclaimer tailored to the current cultural moment. “Every seed packet and Rooty character is designed by a real person, never A.I.”
Before, seed packets ideally yielded enough basil to make pesto for a year. Today, they not only promise abundant basil but, with their intentional packaging, also sustainability, like “Botanical Alphabet,” a series from Piccolo Seeds, which uses packets made with compostable tomato waste fibers.
The seed packet inaugurates the gardening journey, said Milli Proust, a designer and co-owner of Alma Proust, a flower farm in West Sussex, England. She is responsible for the seed packs’ serene, minimalist packaging. “I liked the idea of creating something that invited people to pause, feel the texture as it opens, look at the details, even if it’s all only for a moment,” Proust said.
These companies aren’t the first to create aesthetic seed packets. After transitioning from an initiative at a local public library into a business in 2009, Hudson Valley Seed Company began offering Art Packs. Douglas Muller, the company’s co-founder, recalled that there was only one other business doing something similar at the time. Now the seed packet has found new fans among Gen Z and millennial gardeners.
“We’ve definitely noticed more iterations in the seed world trending closer to what we do, with more bona fide art on packaging,” Muller said, adding, “Our world right now is fractured, unsteady and short on hope. Seeds are the counterpoint: a collectively stewarded resource that speaks of possibilities.”
Newer companies have given their artful packages a mission, and garden mainstays have taken notice. American Meadows sells wildflower seeds in a packet that advertises “Carbon Converters,” asking its customers to help “spread the word about how easy it is to capture carbon from the atmosphere and put it back where it belongs — in plant leaves and soil.”
Some even provide a geographic anchor. Truelove Seeds offers seeds that are important to the African diaspora and other cultural legacies. Packets illustrated by Jasmine Carolyn Hamilton show figures like the painter Horace Pippin and the singer and activist Paul Robeson, while the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library sells seeds from a region where war has devastated agriculture. Understated packets with English and Arabic script hold seeds for Palestinian staples like eggplant and spinach.
“These seeds carry options for our future survival as we face climate change and the erosion of agrobiodiversity worldwide,” according to the founder Vivien Sansour’s site.
A seed packet might not be able to stop the construction of a data center, reverse climate change or vanquish microplastics. But in its current iteration, it sends a flare from a world desperately in need of beauty and connection. “Before there’s a flower, before there’s even a seedling, it’s the first thing a gardener holds in their hands,” Proust said. “It carries the promise of all the beautiful things that might come.”
