Have you ever wondered where the seeds from the Seed Library come from?
DONATIONS! All kinds of lovely, lovely donations.
Our ultimate goal is to build a self-sustaining, community-generated stock of locally-collected seeds from plants that have acclimated to the desert climate. We may never reach 100 percent, but thanks to your help, we have definitely made some progress!
As we move into our fifth year of service, we’re happy to share that about 30 percent of our seed donations come from local gardeners! That's right! The very seeds you're planting could come from your neighbor's backyard herb garden or from one of the many community gardens located throughout Tucson. Sharing seeds is easy! Learn more and start sharing today.
The rest of the seeds come from seed organizations around the country. Every year we share the Seed Library’s recent accomplishments in a newsletter and kindly ask for donations of heirloom and open-pollinated seeds to increase the varieties we have available.
What’s amazing is that we always seem to keep up with demand. In 2012, when we started the Seed Library, library cardholders checked out just under 8,000 packets of seeds. In 2015, we checked out 26,000 packets! This is an amazing feat and makes us wonder what the future has in store.
One idea we had recently was to send our newsletter to local hardware stores to see if they were interested in donating seeds. We heard that they’re sometimes forced to throw them out at the end of the season. We mailed 40 letters and got one response from Lowe’s Home Improvement on North Oracle – but it was one heck of a response! I filled my trunk with four large boxes filled with seeds. We were thrilled, of course, and then as we were sorting the packets, we got a call telling us they had even more seeds to share! Literally, another trunkful of vegetable, herb and flower seeds overflowing from the boxes. And then, while writing this post, we got a third call telling us to stop by and pick up more seeds from the store.
We are so grateful for Lowe’s support!!!
Do you know someone at a local, or national, business who may have seeds to part with? Drop us a line at seed.library@pima.gov.
Happy sowing Tucson.
