I was looking at an old seed packet of flower seeds from 1994 from Johnson seed co in England.
I had to laugh at the instructions,it said plant in moist compost.
Like everybody has a supply over there.

They probably do! There are LOTS of keen gardeners in England!

Linda

Compost is so easy to obtain here, of every flavour. There are numerous garden centres and hardware stores that supply it just within a mile or two from me.

Pretty much go to garden centre, buy some plants and grab your "three for the price of two" bags of compost.

Eco composting centres are quite the thing too. Take away all your garden refuse (you pay for this privilege mind you) to big recycling centres to turn it into compost. They deliver direct to you but be prepared for a big bag delivered by truck.

What is sold as compost over here in most garden centres doesn't actually contain much, if any, actual compost. It's similar to what in the US you would call potting mix, so mostly peat plus lime and fertiliser, though for some reason they don't add perlite. With the increased in popularity of peat free, you'll get various mixtures of coir, composted bark, expanded wood fibre, green waste compost, composted manure, grit etc. As @Amateurinawe says, most councils collect your garden waste for composting at commercial facilities. There is a big composting facility very near to me but they don't seem to sell to the general public. I am happy to use this kind of green waste compost if it's well made, but often it's of variable quality, contains a lot of plastic and I am wary of weed killer contamination from lawn clippings. The budget peat free compost from places like Aldi and Lidl is often 100% green waste compost.

I have never seen compost for sale here.
The compost pile my mother had for 70+ years was just soil and kitchen waste.

A good supply is www.earthcycle.co.uk if you're local. If only others were like this...

Until recently we had two companies on the island producing bags of compost for sale. One of them has disappeared from the market, the other is our local one and their price has shot up from $5 to $7 a bag. I know the quality is excellent so I haven't minded paying the $5 for my home veggies potting mix but we are stretching it at the 7 I paid this past winter. No more thinking I could just get a scoop for the garden or random applications, which used to be $60 not counting delivery and I haven't even asked how much that is gone up. They have priced themselves out of my market.
I found another local enterprise much smaller and less promoted that will sell me a scoop of their compost for the $60. I think their stuff is good quality. They have a farm and also do firewood and beautiful bark mulch from their work on the land. Their farm is not probably 'organic' so IDK about residues in the compost but they do say that organic matter is the best way to reduce chemical residues in soil. So surely it will be down to naught in a year or two.
I am staying the course with the "gold dust" for my mom's winter vegs in containers but no way I could manage the cost for the garden.

Getting back to the original packet;I wonder if the planting instructions were for the U.K?
It makes no mention of outdoor temps for planting outdoors,it just says May to June.
It does have the Metric conversions for people playing along on this side of the pond.
Not that the 28 year old seeds would ever pop.

Arabis alpina pink is the flavour of seed.