Concord Seed Lending Library

The Concord Seed Lending Library opened on April 22, 2013 which also happened to be Earth Day. The Concord Seed Lending Library provides open pollinated vegetable and ornamental seeds and education about saving seeds and organic gardening. It is our hope that seed library patrons will return seeds from their harvest making the library self sustaini... ng. We want to thank Hasso Ewing, farmer, gardener, and landscape architect for giving us the idea for the Seed Lending Library. Our mission is to collect and share bio-diverse, locally-adapted plant seeds, cultivated by and for area residents. We are an initiative of the Concord Free Public Library and the community of Concord, MA. We don't donate seed, we lend it. The object of a seed lending library is for people to borrow a few seeds, plant them, raise the plants, harvest the veggies and herbs or pick the flowers, and then let their best plants go to seed. The seed is then collected and a portion of the seed is returned to the seed lending library for others to use. We formed the lending library for the following reasons: It is important for the sustainability of agriculture, that gardeners use open pollinated, heirloom seeds and that we save that seed to insure our biodiversity. Too many plant varieties have been lost and are no longer available in the seed catalogs. Public libraries are a logical place to house seed collections. The library has resources (books, periodicals, audio, eBooks, articles) so that gardeners can learn how to plant, grow and harvest seeds. We are gardeners as well as librarians and we know how to categorize and catalog seeds. Our logo was designed by Robert Hannan of Concord, MA who submitted the design as a part of our 2012 logo contest. We were delighted to receive so many exceptional entries and thank everyone involved. Enid Hart Boasberg recently retired from the Concord Library after 20 years of service. She has been gardening for over 30 years and saving seed for 2 years.. She is also one of the organizers of the Concord Food, ...Read More