The summer months are high season for seed collection. It’s the perfect time to go out into the field to collect and find native species, which are the origin of our Fleurs Locales project to fill degraded spaces with flowers and create biodiversity. In the three countries that make up this project (France, Spain and Portugal), we go out into the field to monitor the states of maturity of certain species of flora, and we do the collection almost always manually, with our own hands. Then it’s time to clean the seed and store it in dry places to ensure its preservation.

The process continues with processing and cleaning: the seeds sometimes come with fruits or parts that we do not want. They must be separated for conservation and use. At Fleurs Locales, cleaning is usually manual or with simple mechanisms such as column sieve systems or blowers.

Finally, storage must be done with seeds with a very low moisture content, and ensuring traceability with well-labelled lots (date, place and species). We will use this material in the fall or spring, depending on the area, or we may save it for later use.

The land that we are going to sow in Fleurs Locales is very varied and ranges from agricultural spaces to civil works or abandoned urban areas. Success will be when native seeds revive those degraded spaces and turn them into living spaces that offer ecosystems and recovered biodiversity.