Seed Heads

A miraculous story of life and death

A seed head is the dried flowering or fruiting part of a plant, which contains the seeds. Seed heads develop in the centre of the flower. As the petals wilt, they dry. 

The seeds inside the now dead parts of the plant are the ingredients of next season’s life. Dead and alive at the same time. Eventually, the seed heads will open as they disintegrate and allow the seeds to disburse.

Seed heads are beautiful autumn and winter displays, which allow us to embrace the seasonality of gardens. In the past it was considered good practice to tidy the garden before the winter. Fortunately, increasingly more gardeners realise that it is better not to be too tidy. By leaving seed heads and other dead matter we can provide shelter and food for the wildlife. What is good for the wildlife helps the survival of our planet. This is particularly important in our times of climate crisis.

For this series I was inspired by the delicate and beautifully detailed hand painted illustrations in old botanical and horticultural books. The images represent a harmonious blend with my ongoing work discovering the wabi sabi of our garden. I harvested all the seed heads depicted in this series from plants in our own garden. 

Prints

Prints in a limited edition of six are available to buy. The prints are produced in-house by myself. They are numbered and hand-signed and come with a Certificate of Authenticity. For this edition I have chosen Kozo paper from the Japanese paper mill Awagami in A2 size. Read more about this paper here.

To buy prints, click on an image to enlarge it. On a desktop or laptop hover the pointer over the image to display the description and the buy this limited edition print link. On mobile devices, press the red dot on grey background in the bottom right corner of your screen.

You can als0 go straight to Saatchi Art, who handle the sale of my work.