Starting a seed library.

Find partners.

The seed libraries that last almost always have gardeners behind them. Before you order a cabinet, call:

• Your county Extension office and its Master Gardeners. They bring seed, answer patrons' questions, and teach the workshops. Nashville's seed exchange is stocked partly by the Master Gardeners of Davidson County and the Herb Society of Nashville.
• Garden clubs, community gardens and school gardens. They are your first borrowers and your best seed savers.
• A college horticulture program or a nursery. End-of-season seed and a place to grow out a crop.
• Your Friends of the Library group or foundation. Start-up money usually comes from here.

Where the seed comes from.

Expect most of your first-year stock to be donated commercial seed. Seed companies pack seed for a single year and have to clear old stock, so ask at the end of the season, in fall and early winter. Companies that have donated to seed libraries include Seed Savers Exchange, Baker Creek, High Mowing, Fedco, Fruition and Hudson Valley Seed Company, and the Seed Library Network names Cooperative Garden as a supplier to seed hubs; none runs a standing application program that we found, so write to each one. Buy the rest in bulk and pack it yourself.

Stock open-pollinated and heirloom varieties, weighted toward the easy crops: beans, peas, lettuce and tomatoes. They are what borrowers can succeed with, and what will come back. Leave out hybrids, and do not accept patented seed or varieties protected under the Plant Variety Protection Act without the owner's permission.

The cabinet and the packets.

An old library card catalog is the classic home, and it makes the point on its own. Any cabinet with drawers works. Divide it by crop and within each crop by difficulty, so a first-time gardener can tell the easy drawers from the hard ones. The Seed Library Network's signs use three tiers for this: super easy, easy and difficult to save.

Small coin envelopes hold a packet's worth. Keep the cabinet away from sunny windows, heat vents and outside walls; seed ages fastest warm and damp.

Labels and the sign.

In 2016 the Association of American Seed Control Officials added rules for noncommercial seed sharing to its Recommended Uniform State Seed Law, the model most state seed laws follow. Only some states have adopted it (see seed libraries and the law), but its checklist is the safest practice anywhere.

On each packet:

• the crop and the variety, with hybrids marked as hybrids;
• whether the seed is treated;
• a lot or reference number so you can trace it;
• the seed library's name and city;
• the month and year the seed was donated.

Packets hold no more than 4 ounces of vegetable or flower seed. Germination tests are not required, but if you print a germination percentage, say whether it came from an official lab test or a home test.

The sign, posted where the seed is, in the model law's words: the seeds "may not meet germination or varietal purity standards prescribed by the state seed law," and "patented seed or varieties protected by the Plant Variety Protection Act will not be accepted or distributed without permission of the certificate holder."

Borrowing policies.

• Never require returns. Invite them. The model law says a seed sharer may not "expect, or create the expectation, that seeds must be returned," and requiring returns can make a seed library look like a seed business. Of the 534 seed libraries in our directory that state a policy, only 4 ask borrowers to return seed.
• Card or no card. Of 337 that say either way, 203 need no library card. Dropping the card requirement reaches gardeners who do not use the library yet.
• Set a limit. Five packets per visit or per month is common; it keeps the drawers full through planting season.
• Take donations, with standards. Ask donors to label the crop, the variety, the year, the town, and whether other varieties grew nearby. Rag-doll test each donated lot when it arrives.

Catalog it, or not.

Seed libraries run anywhere from an honor-system sign-out sheet to a barcode on every packet. A clipboard is easy, but patrons skip it and you lose the numbers. Cataloging seed in your library's catalog as its own item type (no due date, discharged on checkout, the variety and scientific name in the title, local growers credited) makes the collection searchable and holdable and gives you circulation figures to show a funder. Cooperative Computer Services, a library consortium, published guidance on cataloging a seed library in 2024.

Programs that bring seed back.

• A seed swap. National Seed Swap Day falls on the last Saturday in January; many seed libraries restock that day.
• Seed-saving workshops with Master Gardeners in late summer, when tomatoes and beans are ready.
• Grow a row. Recruit a handful of seed stewards to grow one variety each for seed.
• Cleaning and packing parties in fall, when the returned seed and the donations come in.
• One seed, one community. Everyone grows the same variety, and the library tells its story.

Costs and funding.

Start-up is mostly a cabinet, envelopes, labels, printing and the first seed order, and many libraries find a used card catalog. Ongoing costs are real: one seed librarian interviewed for a 2018 study in Library Quarterly put it at about $2,500 a year, most of it seed. Start-up money most often comes from a Friends group or library foundation, local community foundations, and state library grants funded through the federal Library Services and Technology Act; check with your state library on what is available now.

Put it on the map.

Register your seed library on the Seed Library Network's map, the census most seed libraries use, and tell us about it so it appears in our directory with its hours, limits and rules.

The Seed Library Network's own Start a Seed Library series and the Richmond Grows toolkit, free for noncommercial use, carry forms, signs and packet templates.