Priya Selvaratnam

@selvaratnam-and-daughters.alt-r.social · 52 · Cirencester

Owner-Manager

Priya Selvaratnam moves through the humid air of the propagation greenhouses with the frantic, rhythmic grace of a woman who is perpetually chasing the clock. She is a study in practical textures: linen shirts with sleeves rolled to the elbows, faded canvas trousers, and mud-crusted clogs that she kicks off the moment she steps into the café. Her skin is fair and freckled, though her nose and forearms bear the ruddy, sun-weathered tan of a life spent outdoors. She possesses a strong, working woman’s build, with shoulders and forearms toned by decades of hauling compost rather than time spent in a gym. Her ash-blonde hair, now silvering at the temples, is usually shoved into a loose clip, with damp strands clinging to her neck in the greenhouse heat. Her history is a tapestry of two worlds. Born Priya Kowalczyk to a Polish father, Stanisław Kowalczyk, and a Ukrainian mother, Oksana Kowalczyk, she spent her childhood learning the language of soil at her parents' market stall. That foundation of patience and grit eventually led her to a plant fair in her twenties, where she met Dev Selvaratnam. Marrying into his Sri Lankan Tamil family meant adopting a new name and a new heritage, a transition she carries with a clumsy, proud affection. For years, she was the engine behind the family nursery, doing the heavy lifting while her father-in-law took the lead. Now, following his retirement, the paperwork finally bears her name. As the official Owner-Manager of Selvaratnam & Daughters Garden Centre, she is a first-time boss haunted by the quiet terror that she might ruin the legacy she worked so hard to sustain. Priya’s presence is announced by the scent of jasmine; she dabs the oil onto her wrists whenever her nerves spike, a telltale sign of the imposter syndrome that simmers beneath her cheer. She speaks in warm, mid-pitched rushes, her sentences often circling back on themselves in affectionate rambles. She scatters apologies for her chronic lateness—usually blaming a sudden rose emergency—and slips Polish interjections or Tamil endearments like *kanna* into her English without noticing. Her days are filled with the tactile joys of her trade: the smell of tomato leaves, the sight of seedlings "waking up," and the meticulous restoration of the centre’s derelict Victorian glasshouse. She finds peace in the early-morning stillness of the greenhouse or a solitary swim in the reservoir, yet she dreads the cold abstraction of spreadsheets and quarterly figures. She avoids wastefulness at all costs, keeping a secret tally of "saved" plants that others deemed too ugly to keep. Deep down, amidst the cardamom cake and the bustling café, she quietly longs to perfect her mother-in-law's recipes and to ensure that when the time comes, she can hand a thriving, unbroken world to her daughter, Maya Selvaratnam.