By Carmen Ho
I am a multidisciplinary storyteller, game maker, ethnographic researcher, and community horticulturist. Since 2010, my work has grown at the intersection of imagination and soil—crafting interactive experiences that spark social and cognitive change through festivals, workshops, and community experiments. These days, you’ll often find me at Cranbrook (a community food garden I help run in Tower Hamlets, London), devising and cooking ‘Sensory Suppers’, hosting ‘Seed-Dating’ gatherings, or supporting the Right to Grow movement. I’m also in the early stages of launching Patch, an initiative focused on seeds and grower training that breeds resilience in both plants and people.
One of the projects closest to my heart is Seedlings: A Living Toolkit for Planting Conversations. Seedlings sprouted in January 2025 from a desire to nurture deeper, more meaningful dialogues around seeds—not just how we grow them, but how we imagine, protect, and share them into the future. The project explores seeds as both living matter and metaphor: symbols of resistance, resilience, and collective futures. Rooted in plant-human relationships, Seedlings is a playful, thoughtful space where conversations bloom into collaborative action around food, justice, and ecological care.
What began as a way to connect people across London’s gardens and food-growing spaces has grown into an evolving format—part reading group, part conversation game, part design lab. Each month, participants gather to explore a shared reading or provocation, then engage in hands-on activities to unpack complex issues and imagine just, sustainable futures.
At the heart of each session is Seed-Dating: a ritual of connection where strangers respond to anonymous prompts tucked inside brown envelopes. Each participant brings three offerings:
- A question sparked by the reading
- A place they’d like to grow or save seeds
- A challenge or object related to that place
Through a series of short rounds, these envelopes are passed, opened, and layered with thoughts, sketches, and stories—each exchange weaving new threads into a growing tapestry of ideas.
But Seedlings doesn’t stop at conversation. After Seed-Dating, we shift into co-design mode, using real challenges as seeds for speculative interventions. In small groups, participants imagine place-based responses—ranging from poetic concepts to practical solutions. Some past prototypes include:
- Foraging garments that scatter seeds as you walk
- Soil remediation pods crafted from fungi
- Pee-powered Hügel beds
- Mobile planters for displaced garden
We intentionally design across the futures cone—exploring not only what’s probable, but what’s wildly possible. Together, we cultivate a space where connection, creativity, and collective imagination can germinate into real-world action.
Each session is anchored by a reading on seed-saving practices and their entwined politics. Past themes have included cultural inheritance, genes as currency, diasporic seed stories, the ethics of reviving 3,000-year-old seeds, and the idea of seed libraries for local weeds. These conversations are enriched by a diverse mix of participants—bakers, architects, activists, horologists, geographers, artists, social prescribers, data scientists, gardeners, biologists, podcast producers, lawyers, fashion designers, and of course many shades of growers. This diversity is intentional: cross-pollination is both method and goal.
The format is shaped by my background as a creative producer trained in theatre, political economy, and participatory design. My work often revolves around making collective intelligence visible—inviting people into dialogues they might not usually enter. And I’m nosy: I want to know what people are wondering about seeds, land, and the futures we grow together.
What keeps Seedlings alive is a delicate balance of structure and trust—trust that even brief encounters can plant meaningful seeds. That, without formal minutes or action plans, an idea might still root itself in someone’s imagination, or quietly sprout on a windowsill or in a community garden.
Over time, Seedlings has sprouted new limbs—action mapping, speculative prototyping, and artistic experiments. Yet, I still value the project’s early simplicity: a reading, a question, a conversation with a stranger in a pub with a plant-themed name (shout out to The Florist Arms in Bethnal Green, London!) I’m now experimenting with light-touch funding, offering a small seed pot (£150–£200) to nurture one idea from each gathering into a tangible next step.
Looking ahead, I’m developing a digital toolkit and remote version of the format with a group of seed library organisers in the US. We’ll also be introducing interviews and field visits to explore the practices of local plant breeders. This autumn we’ll be focusing on a breeder in Devon working on tomato resilience—an exciting opportunity to bring together a diverse group in collective dialogue about future crops.
As Seedlings expands, we’re sourcing seeds, readings, materials, and game-making props to support deeper participation. The project now aims to reach larger land worker–focused events and community groups directly, growing both in scale and depth.
Each month feels like a new leaf in a widening canopy. Some participants come once, quietly carrying the experience with them. Others return again and again, drawn to these rare, meaningful conversations with people outside their usual circles. The format remains light and ephemeral—like a two-hour breeze through a garden—but its impact lingers.
Behind the scenes, I archive every session: transcribing pages, gathering feedback, and watching themes emerge month by month. When the group grows beyond 14 people, post-session documentation becomes a full day’s work. I haven’t yet stepped back to analyse seven months of gatherings—but I will, especially in preparation for the upcoming Seed Gathering at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. For now, I hold it close, like a growing compost heap—not yet turned, but full of possibility.
Ultimately, I see Seedlings as a tool for community, connection, and collective imagination. It’s not a commercial project—but it is meant to be shared. If you work with participatory design, community growing, or speculative futures, I’d love to hear from you. This isn’t just a project; it’s a shared question in progress.
For more, visit: https://medium.com/@aspacethatgives or https://www.instagram.com/a_space_that_gives/
Curious about Seed-Dating? Whether you want to join us in London, Totnes (6 Sept) or Wales (17–19 Oct) or grow a session of your own, email me at: aspacethatgives@gmail.com
All photos by permission: Carmen Ho
We hope you enjoyed reading this mega article from Carmen, one of our new Trustees, a much valued contributor to the direction WWOOF UK takes in the future. If you are interested in becoming a Trustee then please take a look at this article where there is information about what the role entails and the skillset we are looking for. Many thanks.
