Seed library locations sprouting across Cambridge as home garden popularity grows
Among the stacks of books at the Preston Idea Exchange, you may be surprised to find stacks of seeds too.
But with the popularity of home gardens growing, the Idea Exchange is helping gardens sprout.
The collection of seeds available at the Preston Idea Exchange. (Ricardo Veneza/CTV News)
At the Preston Idea Exchange you don’t even need a card to check the seeds out.
“Generally, when people come into the library, and they see we have seeds, it's quite a surprise,” Gayle Hoover, manager of the Preston Idea Exchange said.
The seed library was created there in 2017 and is open year-round for members and non-members to come in and take what they please.
Hoover said the Preston Idea Exchange has everything from broccoli to carrots and cucumbers.
The Idea Exchange does encourage seed saving - which is when people bring extra seeds back so the library can put them into circulation again.
Collected seeds are placed into envelopes for storage. (Ricardo Veneza/CTV News)
“Lately, it's a lot of people coming in, and it's more food security. So, people are seeing that vegetables and things you can grow are very, very expensive,” said Hoover.
Because of the organic growth the Preston branch has seen, the Idea Exchange is now branching out.
“We're actually having little seed libraries that will be found at all the locations,” said Hoover.
The collected seeds are catalogued at the Idea Exchange. (Ricardo Veneza/CTV News0
From March to June, people will see smaller seed libraries popping up at the other Idea Exchange locations across Cambridge.
While they won’t be as big as the Preston location’s seed library, it is expected they will have a fairly comprehensive catalog of seeds for the taking.
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