By the 1980s, this developed into a membership organisation with hundreds of wonderful supporters actively conserving and sharing heritage varieties. And 16 years ago, we applied for and won National Collection status to celebrate our progress building this unique, dynamic collection – which now totals 813 varieties.

The collection consists of rare historic, heirloom and ex-commercial vegetable varieties that may otherwise have disappeared. Many may never have been known beyond the families or local communities that selected and saved them. Often, it’s the unique stories and people behind them that help us understand their value.

The two key principles to conserving varieties as seed are to prevent cross-pollination and save seed from only the best examples i.e true to type. Some things are easier to conserve than others and this is reflected in the make-up of our collection. We have lots of peas, French beans and tomatoes in the library because they’re relatively straightforward to develop and keep ‘pure’.

At the most challenging end of the scale is the brassica family. Cabbages, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, etc, take two years to flower and produce seed, take up a huge growing space, and are loved by a wide range of pests!

There is also a huge data trail for the collection, and it’s important to be able to track every seed produced. Some heirloom varieties in the collection may have never formally been described before, so a lot of our work during the growing season includes taking photographs and measurements. By the end of each growing season we will have collected plenty of information from peas per pod to seed coat pattern. This helps us build a picture of how varieties perform and respond to different challenges.