seed library

What a great idea! I stopped off at my local library (Orchard Park, NY) and noticed they had these old card catalog file cabinets. Hoping that I had fallen thru a hole in space time and was back in the 1970s, I examined closely. It’s a seed library! You can take herb and vegetable seeds, plant them, and when you harvest, save seeds and deposit them here!

So cool! We have one in our community, too. And we do a seed-swap here as well, with the remainders going into the library.

Here is a way to find many of (though not all) the seed libraries across the US, Europe and some other regions. It is certainly not a complete list, but it will help people find them:
Seed Libraries across the world

Seed libraries in the Rocky Mountain regions of the US:
Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance all about seed libraries

Two articles about a community seed library in Pennsylvania who had a legal issue with their Dept of Ag - this is the sort of thing worth paying attention to, and speaking out against, in my opinion:
Seed Libraries and the right to share
Seed Libraries and state laws

Want to start a seed library?  Here is an online group of seed librarians!
Seed Librarian group online

They have an article with good ideas for how to prepare for seed swaps, too, and I liked this part:
Ideas for a great seed swap

Do you have any other programming (ex. lectures, hands-on, literature) associated with the seed swap?
Yes, we have held swaps following lectures on gardening and seed saving. This has been very successful. We try to have folks from local seed companies come to lecture at least once a year. We also have seeds available at our seedling swap in the spring and our monthly "planting parties."

We ALWAYS have literature available: a planting calendar for our area, info on "easy to save" seed (beans, peas, tomatoes, lettuce), a more in-depth handout on how to save seed that crosses, a handout on how and why to save seed to donate to the library.

That's from a seed librarian in a city, and not all the ideas will apply everywhere, but it does have great suggestions for making a seed swap helpful to people of all gardening levels. I had not thought of the planting calendar! I think I will do that this year.

from here

Here is a book about Seed Libraries:



https://permies.com/wiki/46935/Seed-Libraries-Means-Keeping-Seeds

And there is even a PEP BB (Badge Bit) for starting one:

https://permies.com/wiki/151173/pep-community/Start-Seed-Library-PEP-BB


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