"A special, important book of hope, action and integrity."—Mark Diacono, food and garden writer

"After reading Adam’s book, I won’t look at a handful of seed the same way again!"—Joe Swift, garden designer; writer; presenter, BBC’s Gardeners’ World

Across the world, chefs, farmers, plant scientists and backyard growers are doing something extraordinary: creating new generations of fruit, vegetables and cereals, all bred specifically to flourish locally, taste delicious, and contribute to our food future.

In The Accidental Seed Heroes, Adam Alexander dons his seed detective homburg to meet these twenty-first century seed heroes, who are not only championing traditional varieties but also breeding delicious new ones that will help create a sustainable future for our planet.

We don’t all need to become backyard breeders or even, like Adam, accidental ones. We don’t even need to eschew, as growers, the modern hybrid cultivars our seed catalogues are stuffed with or, as consumers, boycott those same uninspiring specimens that populate our supermarket shelves. Adam just wants that choice to be better informed and infinitely more diverse and enjoyable.

This story is a celebration of the locally and sustainably grown produce, whether traditional or innovative, that is at the heart of all our food cultures and empowers our rural communities and farmers. Adam believes these new varieties of fruits, vegetables and even grains will not just offer us all nutritious and delicious food but also be part of the solution to combating climate change and returning fertility to our soils and biodiversity to our land.

About The Author

Adam Alexander’s first book, The Seed Detective, told the heritage stories of our everyday veg heroes. It was chosen as one of Radio 4’s The Food Programme’s Books of the Year by Dan Saladino and shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild’s Garden Book of the Year. Adam is a consummate storyteller, thanks to forty years as an award-winning film and television producer, but his true passion is collecting rare, endangered and, above all, delicious vegetables from around the world. He lectures widely on his work discovering and conserving rare, endangered garden crops and is a former board member of the national charity Garden Organic. His knowledge and expertise on growing out vegetables for seed is highly valued by the Heritage Seed Library, for which he is a seed guardian. Adam shares seeds with other growers and gene banks in the USA, Canada and the EU, and he is currently growing out seeds of heritage Syrian vegetables to be returned to the Middle East as part of a programme to revive traditional horticulture. He has appeared on Gardeners’ World, the Great British Food Revival, CNN’s Going Green and Radio New Zealand. Find out more: TheSeedDetective.co.uk / Twitter @vegoutwithadam / Insta @theseeddetective.

Rekha Mistry is a writer and kitchen gardener, named by Country Living Magazine as one to watch in 2021. After reaching the quarterfinal of the BBC’s Big Allotment Challenge in 2015 and achieving the RHS Diploma in Horticulture a year later, she is now a regular columnist for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine and works as a gardener at the historic Inner Temple Garden. Her North London allotment appeared on Gardeners’ World (BBC) and is showcased on her Instagram account, @Rekha.garden.kitchen, which has almost 80k followers.