The launch of SeeHow
Launching a new product in the middle of a global pandemic – seems a bit surreal – maybe even a little crazy! Of course it was not planned this way. The SeeHow garden planning tool has been three years in the making, from first doodles, to the product now available containing 140 beautiful hand-drawn unique illustrations – the building blocks of SeeHow that we call ‘Plantsticks’.
Maybe there is even a silver-lining – albeit well-hidden! The pandemic has focussed our minds in part on the natural world and our impact on it. It was encouraging to see how quickly nature began to recover when most of us stayed at home for a couple of months. Many of us spent more time in our gardens or on our balconies, or pouring over gardening books, planning new borders and vegetable plots. Suddenly there was time available almost every day to see the natural world outside our own windows and to have time to enjoy it – a big benefit of working from home.
For us, this also meant a big push to try to complete SeeHow Vol. 1, when all around, manufacturers and suppliers were closing due to the pandemic. Despite these recent stresses, I can see the connection between SeeHow and the current situation. We have spent the last 3 years studying the lifecycles of hundreds of plants, also looking at how plant combinations benefit nature as well as looking good and making us happy in our gardens. This information is often well-hidden and difficult to collate, especially when many plants are involved. The idea behind SeeHow has never been more important – to present plant information in a simple visual way that anyone, regardless of age, gardening experience or background, can immediately understand and use – helping to connect us to the world outside our windows.
The choice of plants was extremely difficult. However, scouring the on-line observations and opinions of many of the well-known garden writers and broadcasters actually produced a remarkably similar set of favourites, from which the 140 plants in the library were chosen – including a few of my own too! Vol. 2 is currently under development. This is an opportunity for anyone to make suggestions for plants they would like to see and we welcome suggestions in this regard.
Gardening has become an important part of the curriculum in many of our schools – especially our primary schools and a large-format version of SeeHow Vol. 1 will soon be available for children to play with. Because SeeHow is a visual tool, it will allow children to develop their own garden ideas based simply on colour and season – creating colour-calendars of their own school gardens. We can imagine the Plantsticks on the classroom wall, showing the children what to expect and when. No knowledge of plants is actually required!
Playing with the Plantsticks is a great way for all gardeners to look ahead during the dark winter months – a glimpse into a brighter future. So maybe SeeHow has arrived at the right time after all!
We look forward to hearing how you have used your SeeHow Manual and Plantsticks to plan your own gardens and would love to include your stories and photographs here in the future.
The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.