Town residents soon will be able to borrow more than music, books and movies from New Canaan Library, as staffers are working to create a seed library—with its own, dedicated (NewCanaanite.com got a sneak peek) Web page on the facility’s website—within the month.
The way it’ll work is basically this, said Melanie Kelly, a reference librarian here for three years who’s project leader on the seed library: patrons will come in, check seeds out through a standalone database, grow their plants, let some go to seeds themselves and bring those seeds back at the end of the season.
Asked to describe the interest level in gardening in New Canaan, Kelly noted that the town has multiple groups dedicated to it, saying: “People like to grub around in the dirt.”
Melanie Kelly holds a packet of seeds in the area where New Canaan Library plans this month to install a "seed library" for residents.
“In addition to that, people especially my age (31) like to learn about organic farming,” she added. “My husband and I just put in raised beds last year, and I’ve never had a garden before in my life.”
An idea pursued by the library after Director Lisa Oldham heard about and read up on seed libraries, and discovered that there’s a lot of interest in this region, New Canaan is modeling its program, in part, on the successful seed2seed effort at Fairfield Woods Branch Library.
Kelly at her desk has thousands of seeds, representing hundreds of varietals, both vegetables and flowers, and the staff is planning to house the physical seed library just behind the desk that visitors face when they come in off of the parking lots out back.
A peek at the seed library’s website reveals a vast cross-section of flowers and vegetables, often with scores of varietals within the same group. For example, here are the types of tomatoes listed:
- Amish Paste
- Aunt Ruby German
- Beefsteak
- Black Cherry
- Black Prince
- Brandywine Mix
- Burbank
- Debarao
- Evergreen
- Garden Peach
- Great White
- Old German
- Pink Brandywine
- Porter Improved
- Prudens Purple
- Purple de Milpa
- Purple Tomatillo
- Rainbow Mix Cherry Tomato
- Roma
- Siberia
- Solanum lycopersicum (Italian Heirloom)
- Speckled Roman
- Tangerine
- Valencia
- Yellow Brandywine
- Yellow Stuffer
Twenty-six types of tomatoes—that’s half-again as many books as Daniel Silva has published. (You should see the lettuce.)
Oldham said that seed libraries, though they’re low-risk in the sense that they don’t require huge amounts of money to launch, may help New Canaan tap into a growing consciousness of wanting to preserve the genetic diversity of crops.
“So when you go to a supermarket, your choice of tomatoes often is just one,” she said. “It’s getting better around here, but in general there used to be 100 different varieties of tomatoes. We are down to a couple that are commercially available to us. By growing them and by having seed banks, we can actually re-establish the genetic diversity and get all those different flavors and colors and haven’t just been developed so that they can be transported in a truck—and often taste like nothing—but really delicious, nutritious different varietals.”
Nearly all the seeds New Canaan Library is starting with were donated by groups such as Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Kelly said, and she’s also tapping expertise from groups such as the Connecticut Master Gardeners Association.
The library will build some nuts-and-bolts programming for interested patrons, she said, such as Planting Your Seedlings, Three-Season Gardening and Seed Saving. The library also has valuable, close relationships with local gardening groups, Oldham said, and one member of staff is an expert in container gardening, which could work into the programming.