You can now check out seeds as well as books from the downtown Fredericksburg branch of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library.
CRRL staff have repurposed an old, unused card catalog to serve as a seed library, and it officially opened to the public on Monday—Earth Day.
“Seed libraries have been around for a while—a bunch of other public libraries have them, which is fantastic,” said Erin Creighton, interim branch manager at the downtown library. “They’re a really great way to help people who may not have the resources to grow their own food.”
Customers can check out up to 10 packages of vegetable, herb, or flower seeds so they can start their own gardens.
“Where the library part comes in is, you borrow the seeds, you make your garden and hopefully it’s successful, and then when you harvest the plants, we’re asking you to dry out some of your seeds and return them to the library,” Creighton said. “So, we can keep it going and moving forward.”
Creighton said she and her coworker Kristi Lisech had talked about starting a seed lending library years ago but were stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This past fall, a library customer and local gardening enthusiast, Jim Daniels, contacted Creighton to urge her to resurrect the plan, and the timing was right to put everything in place for a spring opening.
The local Master Gardeners Association, which already has a partnership in place with CRRL, donated seeds from its annual seed exchange to the seed library, and library staff also launched a community seed drive in March.
These two efforts were so successful that the seed library was able to open without CRRL having to purchase anything, Creighton said.
The library is still accepting donations for the seed library. Creighton said heirloom seeds are preferred, because seeds harvested from plants grown from heirloom seeds will regrow year after year, but hybrid seeds are also welcome.
In order to streamline the process, Creighton and Lisech repackage all the donated seeds into smaller packages of 10, enough to get the average small garden started.
“Because we’re the library and we like to provide information, we made up these labels for all of the packages, with the scientific name, common name, a little picture, and planting information,” Creighton said.
CRRL staff hosted a kickoff event for the seed library on Monday, in partnership with the community garden Downtown Greens. About 70 people showed up, and thanks to social media, more people came in about an hour after the event ended.
“Yesterday we had a stream of people, just one after another,” Creighton said.
Starting up the seed library has been a lot of work, Creighton said, but it’s been worth it. She said she is grateful to CRRL administration for supporting the project and to the community for welcoming it with so much enthusiasm.
The library is hosting a number of programs this summer designed to help people grow successful gardens. Coming up on May 11, Daniels will present “Hydroponics for Beginners,” in which attendees will learn about hydroponics—a process for growing plants without soil—and then build a simple hydroponics container to take home.
The seed lending library is located on the third floor of the downtown Fredericksburg library and is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Anyone who is interesting in volunteering to help with the seed library can contact Creighton at [email protected].
