Seed Stewards prepare for the grand opening of the Los Alamos Community Seed Library, from left, Ame Mashburn, KokHeong McNaughton, Jane Riese, Alison Grieggs and Barbara Mann. Courtesy//Eva Jacobson
COUNTY News:
Los Alamos County Library System staff have announced that the Los Alamos Community Seed Library will open Monday, March 27.
The seed collection will be located at the Mesa Public Library and is available to all Library patrons.
The Grand Opening of the Seed Library is 2 p.m. Saturday, March 25 at the Mesa Public Library in Los Alamos. The Grand Opening will feature the official ribbon cutting ceremony followed by a reception with seed themed refreshments. Informational tables with seed and gardening resources will be in place during the event.
Grand Opening guests also may enter a drawing for ten golden tickets that will allow the winners a chance to check out seeds during the event. All members of the public, garden enthusiasts, and regular Library patrons are welcome.
The Los Alamos Community Seed Library is the result of a yearlong volunteer driven community effort. Volunteers gathered for an inaugural meeting during the winter of 2022 and formed what would become the Seed Library Steering Committee. The goal was to collect and grow locally adapted seeds, and to build community through resource sharing and learning.
The Los Alamos County Libraries entered the collaboration as the distribution point for the seed collection, and the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (PEEC) joined the effort as a cohost for seed themed programming. A group of volunteers, now dubbed the Seed Stewards, started to collect seeds through donations in the spring of 2022. The group has put in countless hours of sorting and packaging and the first collection of seeds is now ready to be shared with the community just in time for spring planting.
The seed collection will be kept in a card catalog in the Adult Services desk area at the Mesa Public Library. The vintage card catalog was donated by Los Alamos resident, Sue Watts. Library patrons may peruse the collection and select up to five seed varieties per check-out and a total of 30 packets per household over the course of the summer. Upon the first check-out, patrons will sign a pledge to grow the seeds and return whatever they can successfully harvest back to the seed library. This will allow all to borrow, grow, and share year after year.
Visit the event calendar at LosAlamosLibrary.org for the Grand Opening details or call Sr. Librarian Eva Jacobson at 505.663.1812 for more information about the seed library.
