About Us

We are a small seed farm and seed company based in Dorset. We take pride in every aspect of our work, whether that be at the farm or in the seed office.

Winnow Farm is the culmination of a decade spent growing plants, picking flowers and cooking dinner. We only offer varieties that we love - varieties proven to be robust, flavourful and beautiful. We clearly explain why each of our varieties has a place in our catalogue and offer straightforward growing advice. We tell the stories behind our varieties and the people who have stewarded them.

 

Who are we?

Ellen Rignell 

Ellen established Winnow Farm Seeds in 2024 in response to the lack regional seed companies in the UK. She has been growing vegetables, flowers and herbs for over a decade, both professionally and at home. Her horticultural work has spanned organic market gardening, commercial seed production and plant science. She has also spent years working at the Gaia Foundation's Seed Sovereignty Programme, coordinating the thriving seed saving network in the South West.

She particularly interested in varieties with excellent culinary qualities and strong genetics and she enjoys trialling and breeding projects at the farm. Her aim is to bring colourful, flavourful and genetically diverse varieties to your garden.

 

Lucy Saville and Emma Dixon - Meadowsweet Flowers and Floristry

     

We're lucky enough to share our farm with Emma & Lucy of Meadowsweet Flowers and Floristry. They grow a gorgeous selection of cut flowers to use in wedding floral design and to sell locally. Our cut flower catalogue is full of their sage recommendations.

 

Our Seed Catalogue

Parsnip seeds drying

We are working towards a catalogue made up of 100% locally grown seed.

By the time our shop opens in September, our catalogue will be made up of 50% locally grown seed. By this we mean that 50% of the varieties we offer will have been grown by us or another small, family farm nearby. The other seed we sell is bought in from suppliers we trust to grow well-selected, high quality seed. We regularly test our seed for germination and seedling vigour and include latest germination rates on our packets.

We will grow more varieties ourselves each year and we work with local growers to supply seeds we don't have the space to grow ourselves.

 

You can expect our seeds to:

  • Be great quality - we only sell seed with great germination and vigorous seedling growth.
  • Be resilient and robust - we only sell vigorous varieties which are adapted to home gardens and thrive in the face of unpredictable British weather.
  • Be flavourful (if its a vegetable or herb) - there's nothing more disappointing than going to the trouble of growing your own, only to find the flavour's a bit lacking. Our varieties taste great. We choose them for their culinary qualities and explain how to use them in the kitchen.
  • Be beautiful - we only sell cut flower varieties which we think are stunning, and we think our vegetables and herbs are beautiful in their own way too. We share our farm with Emma and Lucy from Meadowsweet Flowers & Floristry who help us thoroughly trial varieties before we put them in our catalogue.
  • Be open pollinated - we only offer varieties which you can successfully save seed from. No F1 hybrids here. Open pollinated varieties are genetically diverse and have the plasticity to adapt to our local climate. We think they're the best option for home gardeners. 
  • Have a story - we connect our seeds back to their seed stewards, telling you a bit about the people and cultures that bred them. Growing food and creating gardens connects us all.

 

Growing Practices

We are a DEFRA and Soil Association certified seed merchant*. Our field is currently 'in conversion' and will be fully certified organic at the end of 2024.

We grow this way for two reasons:

1. Its better for the environment. We came to farming through an appreciation of the natural world. As seed growers we see ourselves as part of a wider ecosystem which encompasses people, animals, plants and soil. We want to protect and regenerate the land we farm.

2. It makes for better varieties. We want to select plants that are robust enough to thrive in any garden. One of our farm tenants is to 'treat them mean'. This means we don't molly coddle our plants with fertilisers, insecticides and fungicides. We expect our plants to fend for themselves and in doing so breed plants that flourish. 

If you'd like to learn more about how we grow seeds and the varieties we offer in our catalogue, follow us on instagram or sign up to our newsletter (on our homepage).

*N.B. Our catalogue isn't exclusively organic and we offer some conventionally grown varieties which we haven't been able to grow ourselves and can't yet source from an organic certified supplier.