About The Heartfelt Seed Collection
Background
During the Pandemic, there was an explosion of interest in gardening, and the demand for seeds more than doubled. This growth was exciting at first, but as I approached retirement age, I became concerned about the fact what wasn't growing was the number of new seed savers.
Even though I had given dozens of seed saving workshops to adult gardeners, I had yet to turn out a significant number of new seed savers.
Even though my seeds are open pollinated and meant to be saved, it seemed most customers would rather pay to reorder seed every year, than to save it themselves for free
And, without new seed savers to lend a hand in the continuing race to preserve our open pollinated varieties, my seed preservation efforts started to feel senseless.
An Integrated Approach to Seed Education
One day it dawned on me that children are the ones who have most to lose when it comes to the extinction of OP plant varieties and I began to believe that perhaps, with the right inspiration and education, children could be the next wave of new seed savers.
I started Heartfelt Seed with the goal of creating an integrated approach to making the rules of plant breeding interesting to children. At the time, I had lots of wool, and so began to needle-felt portraits of my favorite seed projects for inspiration. As the panels evolved and turned into illustrations, the story of Zoe and the Seed Garden unfolded.
Field Testing
After the Pandemic, we did retire and downsized our commercial seed operation to a half acre "micro-farm" with the intention of field testing growing seeds of the plant varieties that would be featured in the story.
I asked a lot from these varieties. They had to be easy to grow heirlooms with interesting histories that would teach a specific botanical concept related to Zoe's story. They had to either bloom in spring, or ripen in the fall to correspond to the school calendar, and produce seeds with obvious, easy to clean seed heads. This strict criteria narrowed the field to these very special twenty varieties.
Hopefully, growing out and saving seed from these pre-selected varieties will help you build a connection to Zoe and the Seed Garden, and will inspire you to find your own favorite OP varieties to save for the future.
Happy Seed Saving!