Gut health and gardens – what could they possibly have in common? Linda Galvad, the entrepreneurial force behind Sought After Seedlings, is here to explain.
Linda Galvad is a woman with a mission. To help people understand that when they eat nutrient dense, organic fruit and veg, they really do stand the chance of living their best life. And, no, we’re not just talking more vitality and all the other health benefits we know come with your five a day. “You can actually eat your way to better mental and physical health, with less stress, depression, anxiety, and many other diseases,” Linda says.
Her knowledge on the subject has been hard earned. Linda suffered from anxiety throughout her life, until she decided to consult a homeopath. Part of her treatment was a diet that, today, we’d describe as ‘free from’ and which would have us browsing the gluten-, lactose- and sugar-free aisles in Woolies, but back then, required a lot of resourcefulness. “It was very difficult to find such foods back in those days, so I had to make everything I ate from scratch,” she remembers. That was just as difficult as it sounded, but as a foodie, Linda rather enjoyed the challenge. More than that, she noticed that her anxiety decreased significantly – and, serendipitously, she found a new passion.
“Eating nutrient-packed organic veggies really changed my life for the better, and I wanted to spread the word so that other people could experience the same benefits. But since the range available to us was really limited at the time – green beans and cauliflower were considered exotic – I knew it would be difficult,” Linda explains. So she decided to approach her undertaking from a different angle. Instead of telling people to buy fresh produce so that they could bolster their mental health, she’d get them excited about growing their own organically, sans pesticides and chemicals, and the mental wellness benefits would come about as a by-product.
That’s how Sought After Seedlings was born. Sought After because Linda invested an enormous amount of energy to make planting and good health desirable (or, as she puts it, “freaking sexy”). That involved increasing her own knowledge by researching and reading countless books, as well as hunting down seeds that would flourish into produce of the very highest quality.
Her research made her realise that heirloom seeds were the answer here … they’re incredibly resilient, grow easily and have amazing genetic variability and variety – there are more than 600 types of heirloom tomatoes, for example. When she came across Franchi Sementi seeds, she knew she’d found her perfect product. She had been growing all her own seeds until this point – “but then I was given these seeds. It was a real Jack and the Beanstalk story. I planted some seeds, of a variety of babymarrow called Tromba d’Albenga, four years after they were given to me, and they grew into the hugest vegetables I could imagine.”
Linda knew she wanted to make the seeds more accessible in South Africa, but she didn’t know how. She travelled to the UK to ask the British distributors of the seeds if she could become their agent in South Africa, was turned down, and then was invited to speak to the head of the company in Italy. She flew off to Italy to ask to be signed on as a distributor – all without knowing a single thing about importing. Finally, was made distributor for South Africa and Africa.
As it turned out, this was a tricky business. The early years of Sought After Seedlings were spent literally peddling the seeds to potential customers, because they couldn’t be sold through the usual retail channels – regulations around the seeds meant that was just too complicated, because they were considered “experimental” by the Department of Agriculture. After complying with all requirements, legislation changed – and as soon as the seeds were made available in nurseries, demand skyrocketed.
It wasn’t long before Linda was doing more than selling seedlings. She was offered a scholarship to complete an MBA in entrepreneurial development at GIBS; she was approached by celebrity chef David Higgs to design the rooftop organic vegetable garden for his then restaurant at The Saxon Hotel, Villas and Spa, 500 (and which she continued to work on for 11 years), she was nominated as a finalist in the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards, and she was invited to co-host Gardening 101 with Melanie Walker on DSTV’s Home Channel (you can still catch daily reruns years later). She even appeared on British TV, and hosts gardening courses all over the country. Best moment … signing an indemnity form exonerating the game reserve of responsibility if she was eaten by a lion in Madikwe. She even released her own, more affordable range of heirloom seeds, Linda’s Original Seeds, in 2020.
It’s been frenetic – but it’s also placed Linda in a position to accumulate more knowledge about the subject that truly ignites her … the relationship between nutrition and mental health, a link which, she notes, was not explained during her university studies in psychology. She’s thrilled by the evolving knowledge available on the topic, and continues to update her own – she has completed a semester of a course on horticultural therapy at the University of Florida, USA for example, and is currently working on a programme through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York – and lights up when she gets a chance to share her learnings with others.
She’s ecstatic when she is invited to spread the message in schools and corporates, and uses her courses as a vehicle to drive it home: “It’s really the science of what you need to be happy. We’re all about demystifying the planting process and making people understand that mental and physical health is easily attainable. It’s as simple as growing your own food.”
Details: soughtafterseedlings.co.za, follow @soughtafterseedlings on social media.
Linda’s tips for great gut health
- Eat large amounts of organically grown vegetables for nutrients and fibre.
- Drinking plenty of water promotes a healthy GUT
- Exercise and de-stressing should be part of your regular regime.
- Avoid alcohol, smoking, sugar and stress, all of which creates imbalances in your gut, causing bad bacteria to proliferate over good.
- Eat fermented foods like sauerkraut to feed your good gut bacteria.
Text: LISA WITEPSKI • Photographer: Deon Lourens.
