The Seed Library Program at Durham County Library

Bring your winter crop seeds or find some for yourself at your local Durham County Library.

By Jenny Levine
Humanities and Adult Programming Coordinator
Durham County Library

Maybe you have noticed the card catalogs that have popped up at several library locations? If not, take a look inside one the next time you are in the library! They are currently housed at North, South, East, Southwest and Main Libraries. Each patron can take up to four packets of seeds per season from the Seed Library catalogs to take home, grow and enjoy.

Available at these locations are a selection of vegetables, herbs and flowers. Thanks to generous donations from patrons, as well as our partners at SEEDS, we have enough seed packets for every gardener in the community. When we get low on seeds, we purchase them from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Virginia (http://www.southernexposure.com/), or from our neighbors at Stone Brothers & Byrd. We have made every effort to offer a variety of organic seeds and are not currently accepting or offering hybrid seeds.

The Seed Library was started by Joanne Abel (now retired) in 2014. With the help of a great community of supporters, the Seed Library committee and the Durham Library Foundation, Joanne was able to purchase the card catalogs, seeds and supplies. Growing information is also available next to each catalog of seeds. Further assistance for the project was provided by our Library Webmaster, Matt Clobridge, who created a very useful website: http://diggingdurham.org/. At the site, users can find information on seed saving and planting. There is also a section where local gardeners can share stories about their heirloom seed varieties.

Along with the seed saving workshops, we have had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Craig LeHouiller, aka ‘The Tomato Man” for tomato plant giveaways! We hope to see him soon with his pickup truck full of great plants. If you have not started your garden yet, young plants can be a great way to get your garden growing. Spring and summer seeds are currently available, and fall seeds will arrive in the catalogs closer to September.

The long term hope for the seed library is that will someday be fully supported by donations from local growers. That way, all of our seeds will be tried and tested in local Durham soil! It will be wonderful to someday say that all of our stock was locally grown and supplied by local farmers. If you don’t know already how to save seeds for next season, check out diggindurham.org or the library for seed saving workshops.

For questions about the Seed Library and how it works, please contact Claudia Alemán at 919-560-0116.