After suffering a loss in early 2022, and feeling much guilt, David Holmes – a lawyer by profession - spent hours online, searching for ecological ways of making use of Lucy’s precious ashes. Whilst searching, he found lots of really beautiful options, but he felt that none of them would have been right for Lucy. This led David to launch Ashes to Blooms, to provide other people what he felt would have been a fitting tribute to Lucy & to offer them what he had not been able to find.
Ashes to Blooms take some of the ashes of a loved one, whether a beloved person or a special companion animal, and combines them with a combination of UK native wildflower seeds & other natural ingredients to create bespoke seed balls. Families can also choose the flower varieties used, or decide between a range of specially-selected seed mixes. Customers are then able to give their wildflower memorial seed balls to friends & family (or keep for themselves) to scatter in a special place and watch their wildflower memorial grow. This is what David would have wanted for Lucy.
Later in 2022 David lost his brother, Andrew, and had the honour of making seed balls, using his ashes. Hand-rolling the seedballs was very cathartic for him, and he felt honoured that his family had trusted him with the last physical part of Andrew that remained on Earth. In the spring of 2023 they each planted Andrew’s seedballs in their gardens and in planters on their balconies, and he has since been growing with them, each summer. During the winter he goes into hibernation, and he will be back during the summer, and his family await his return.
The service has since been expanded the service to offer bespoke wildflower funeral favours, a dedicated animal service, Pet Ashes to Blooms, subsequently launched in 2024 & seedball-making kits, so that families may make their own seed balls, using their loved one’s ashes.