The standard paper seed packet, as anyone who has spent a February afternoon re-organizing a kitchen drawer will attest, is not doing anyone any favors. It lasts about one year before germination rates begin their quiet decline. After that, it lives in the drawer for another two to four years, optimistically, before being thrown away -- contributing to what the gardening industry does not like to talk about, which is that most seed packaging ends up in landfill having never grown a single thing. Shido Seeds are vacuum-sealed and hermetically closed. Oxygen removed. Viability preserved. The packet does not expire quietly in a drawer. It waits.

Each packet is illustrated in the style of Japanese 1910s woodblock printing -- designed and drawn in-house at Chive, the Toronto ceramics studio that has been exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show in London every year and does not, as a matter of principle, sell to big-box retailers. People collect the packets for the artwork. This was not the original plan, but we have chosen to be flattered rather than confused.

Every seed lot is germination and pathology tested at independent third-party labs before it earns its artwork.