My husband John is a great gardener. I love gardening, too, so about 5 years ago, and I blogged about this before, we started turning our lawn into a huge garden and every year we add raised beds… he was just plotting new ones out this afternoon.
Working at the library, I talk to all kinds of people. I’ve gotten to know our community pretty well, and I thought, hey, there are gardeners of all kinds in our town, why not start a gardener’s round-table at the library. A place where gardeners could network, share ideas, check out gardening books and invite speakers to talk about all aspects of gardening. I got the go-ahead and postered the town and sent info out to the media.
It being January, and NH having such looooong winters, the hope was to make everyone feel better by looking forward to Spring. We had 10 home gardeners show up at the first meeting, a good core group, who really enjoyed themselves. One of the ideas we discussed was holding a seed swap in March. This was a concept I came across online
(Thank you Mother Earth News!).
Everyone was gung-ho, so I contacted seed companies for catalogs and some generous ones sent seed samples for the swap. Gardeners who grew fantastic plants and saved seeds can share those, or people could bring packaged seeds to share. My hope was that we could get enough seed for people who didn’t bring anything to be able to go home with something to try growing. I put a call-out locally for seed donations.
Then, I thought I would blog about the seed swap here and if anyone would like to donate seeds for this event we would really appreciate your help! You can mail seeds to:
Stephanie Piro c/o the Goodwin Library, 422 Main St. , Farmington, NH 03835
And… if anyone sends 10 packages of seeds or more ,
I will send you a personal thank you with an original sketch!
January 24th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Dear Stephanie, This is tremendous! I can’t believe John’s garden will be even bigger this year. Looking forward to hearing more all about the swap, and the ensuing gardens.
January 24th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Thanks, Isy. In researching online for the gardener’s roundtable I came across a radical gardening movement called “Food Not Lawns”!
Steph
January 24th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Wow! Great post. Yeah, those packets of seeds always have so many seeds. Good idea. Can’t wait to see the results.
January 25th, 2010 at 5:53 am
You’re always looking for, and finding, ways to build community, Steph. This is just one more example of why you’re such an asset to NH.
Plus, your drawings are always a pleasure – how do you make it look so easy?!
January 25th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Thank you, Benita and Peg! You are both waay too sweet! It’s hard to motivate people at the time we are able to do our programming. We are open 2 nights till 8, and personally, on a cold winter night, I can understand why many people don’t want to go out after working all day. I am always amazed when we do get a big turn-out for something! It’s a challenge!
Steph