By Cheryl Jahn

Seed library is coming back

Dec 15, 2023 | 4:06 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It’s not the usual sign out from the Prince George Public Library. Not books, not magazines or videos. Seeds. The seed library will be making a return.

“The seed library has several purposes,” explains Susan Knoll, who is overseeing the project. “The main thing is to encourage new gardeners or people who haven’t planted seeds before to come and pick up some things that might interest them. Put them in the dirt and see what comes up. The joy of seeing their babies come up.”

Several disastrous events in recent years cutting off access to the North have driven home the importance of food supply.

“To help establish things that grow well in the north so that seeds that do well here come back again and go round and round. But yeah, for people to grow their own food that they know is healthy.”

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The public library has played host to the seed library naturally, and it’s a match made in heaven.

“The master gardeners and the David Douglas Botanical Society are incredible at helping us put on a series of programs around gardening and them and. And so we do quite a few programs between those and our easy being green that help us to be able to,” explains Jen Rubadeau, Manager of Communications and Engagement.

The David Douglas Botanical Gardens Society now has a call out for seeds.

“The specific seeds don’t matter as much. I think the specific seeds are because we have a catalog that people can look through and then you can see the information about planting, and there are generally things that do well here in the North. But if you had, well, something like a bean, a bean of some sort, even if we don’t use it for the library, we could use it for Seed Saturday.”

But the challenge is that those who check out the seeds, so to speak, weren’t reciprocating. And that is one of the points, is that so far we’ve had very little return.

“So people have borrowed last year that we loaned out more than a thousand packages and there’s been very little return. So to keep it going, that’s the thing that we need to really get people to actually save their seeds and bring some back.”

And now is the time the Botanical Society would love to start amassing the seeds for the library and will do so at several workshops.