Save One Seed Save the World by Nancy Taylor Robson

I was about to collect my mail when a driver pulled up to the finger of garden that juts into the parking lot at the post office, opened his door, and gently snapped off the dried seed head of one of the native Purple Coneflowers (Echinacea) there. It had been waving in the breeze along with the spent stems of the Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia), Hyssop, and wild Aster.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

He paused, then decided my question was curiosity not rebuke.

“Seeds,” he replied, carefully wrapping his prize in a handkerchief.

“Ah!” I smiled. “Good!”

I leave the desiccated natives up all winter to provide seeds, which are protein and fats, for the birds. (Also, they’re beautiful, clad in early morning hoarfrost).

“They will attract goldfinches, chickadees and other songbirds you can enjoy watching all winter,” says National Wildlife Foundation’s David Mizejewski.

But until then, I hadn’t thought of anyone harvesting the seeds. Yet it makes all kinds of sense. For one thing, saving seed and growing plants from those seeds (provided they aren’t patented, another conversation) is economical.

“I do it [partly] because it saves money,” says Kent County Master Gardener Denise Dersch. Cost (free) may have been the impulse behind the judicious seed harvester at the post office.

While there have been seed companies for centuries – Jefferson and Washington both ordered from D. Landreth in Philadelphia – most people didn’t buy seed. Instead, they saved whatever they needed from their own and their neighbors’ gardens. For generations.

“They didn’t have degrees,” says Diane Ott Whealy, co-founder with her husband, Kent, of independent nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) in Decorah Iowa. “They just knew if they wanted to have a garden next year, they needed to save the seed.”

It was self-sufficiency, sustenance, and helped to sustain community. And for many immigrants, it was also a taste of home.

“It’s a tradition that’s part of our culture,” says Whealy. In the 1970’s, Whealy’s Bavarian grandfather, John Ott, who had immigrated to Iowa, entrusted her and Kent with two carefully saved heirloom open-pollinated varieties, Grandpa Ott’s morning glory (a beautiful purple with pinky-red streaks in its throat), and ‘German Pink’ tomato. These two varieties were the beginning of the now-vast SSE collection that includes shared – and traded – seed from thousands of members. “When you think back, all of the seeds we have today are here because people saved them,” says Whealy. “We wouldn’t have it if our ancestors hadn’t saved seed. It really adds so much interest to our food, our gardens, and the stories maintaining that one little seed.”=

But seed saving is not just tradition. It’s survival. Vandana Shiva, physicist, ecologist, and activist, has spent over half her life advocating for preservation of our earth’s diverse seed because, as she observes, “When you control seed, you control life on earth.”

“People knew the importance of seed to feed their country,” says Whealy.

In The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice Simon Parkin details the harrowing story of Russian botanist, Nikolai Vavilov, and his colleagues. Having lived through famine, they were striving during WWII to preserve their seed bank for the nation, its contents gathered from around the world. To ensure the seed was viable, they were replanting in a garden only a mile from the German line under cover of darkness, sometimes while being shelled.

“The best way to save the seed is to grow it,” Whealy explains.

I collect and save seed – lemon peppers aka aji limon (Capsicum baccatum) and seed from heirloom pumpkins and squash. I also let cilantro, arugula, and lettuces go to seed in the garden for late season * and/or next year’s crops. My effort is desultory at best, yet I understand the imperative.

“Saving varieties that you can save the seed from is so important,” says Whealy. “Because it’s saving diversity.”

Diversity increases resilience. Reliance on a single variety, each identical plant susceptible to the same diseases, is a recipe for disaster. The Irish potato famine was attributed in part to lack of genetic diversity (nearly all potatoes in Ireland were the Irish Lumper). Saving seed – different varieties of the same crop – enlarges the gene pool, which increases potential disease resistance. Plus, it keeps the seeds in many sharing hands i.e. in public domain.

“Keeping the seed in public domain prevents companies from patenting it,” says Whealy. Patented seed may not be saved or shared; it must be bought each year from the patenting company such as Bayer. To gain a seed patent, companies are required to demonstrate they have developed a specific variety for specific traits. “[But] if it’s grown all over, it’s not a unique variety to them,” Whealy says.

In addition to diversity, saving seed over years and generations in the same place allows a variety’s gradual adaptation to specific regional growing conditions (i.e. regional ecotypes). One example is ‘Ronny’s Red’ okra that Bill Braun, founder of Free Seed Federation, a farmer-run nonprofit in Dartmouth, MA, mentions in an interview with New York Times writer, Margaret Roach. The seed for that okra, normally a southern crop, was grown and saved and regrown for nearly 50 years in Westport, MA by Ronny Bramwell. This variety grows quickly and sets flowers and fruits fast enough that it produces in a northern summer.

Plus, seed saving is fun.

“It’s a hobby,” says Denise Dersch. “I like to see what grows and doesn’t. This will be my fourth year coming up. I’m saving the seeds of Echinacea this year. I might also try Joe Pye Weed and Anise Hyssop. I want to get these natives going because we’re trying to get more of the town [Rock Hall] planting the natives, which helps all Nature. I have so many butterflies in my garden this year, all kinds, not only Monarchs, but also Viceroy and the American Lady. I have dragon flies, and an orb weaver spider – it’s so pretty! And I have hummingbirds. I don’t put up feeders anymore. I used to, but I didn’t have time to fuss with them. Now I plant the flowers that attract and wow! It does work. So that’s really why I do a lot of this.”

There are lots of good resources for learning to save seed. One good book is The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving. Penn State Extension offers the basics, while  Seeds and Such offers a step by step tutorial.

*Kent County Master Gardeners Denise Dersch and Debra Silberg will present Fall Planting & Harvest and Winter Seed Sowing at Kent County Public Library on Saturday Oct 3, 2026, at 2pm. All welcome!

Lead photo: Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glory (Courtesy of SSE)

Longtime journalist, essayist, and garden writer, Nancy Taylor Robson is also the author of four books: the memoir Woman in The Wheelhouse; award-winning Course of the Waterman; A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, a Modern Love Story; and OK Now What? A Caregiver’s Guide to What Matters, which she wrote with Sue Collins, RN.