I woke up one morning and decided that this was the day that I would sow some Basil seed.  I use loads of basil and other herbs when cooking and my current plants were getting old and tired.  I went to my local garden centre and selected a few varieties and then realised that I was going to have way to many seeds and the seeds were not cheap.

Too many seeds

I went home, sowed a selection of the seeds and thought.  Thought a bit more.  Continued to think. Then came up with an idea, why not sell packets of seeds with fewer seeds of each type but a mixture of several types. Then I realised that people might not want to just have a jumble of different varieties in one pot.

Mixed seeds

Back to the drawing board.  Finally I came up with the solution, create a small booklet and incorporate the seeds within the pages of the book.  Again I could see issues but at this point everything was beginning to take shape.

Then one night I had the eureka moment.  If I could present the seeds encapsulated in a degradable paper then everything fell into place.  I experimented over the following weeks with different techniques and finally found the solution.

I decided that the format of the book should remain the same despite the different collections that could be offered.  The book should contain details of 6 plants, it should include details regarding characteristics, uses, history as well as a recipe that highlighted the flavours of the herb or fruit.  The book should also contain a pull out piece of seed paper for each of the six plants.

With this idea in front of me I was ready to start production. The next stage was to assess what plants to use and to develop a range of titles for the different collections that I wanted to produce.