Restore the power of native seeds on the landscape through ethical seed saving!
Wild, native seeds heal relationships with the land and bring many gifts to people. The flow of wild seed is a natural process that has been sustaining all life for millennia through nourishing the landscape, boosting resilience, and providing ecosystem services to communities. One native plant has the potential to produce hundreds or even thousands of seeds, carrying valuable genes into the future, but millions of plants are needed to support a healthy resilient landscape. With many native plants now at risk and at fragments of historic levels, we are losing resilience across the landscape.
So, caring gardeners, communities, and businesses have an important role to play to help seeds in the spirit of reciprocity!
The new Southern Ontario Seed Saver Tool will support efforts to accelerate the protection of native seed sources across the region. Through seed saving activities, like seed orchards or seed collection areas, we can harness the regenerative power of seeds and return more native plants to the landscape.
Seeding New Connections
We have the potential to reconcile with the past and lead the way to a healthy future through seed saving activities. Like wild seeds, as a collective, we can boost our impact while growing healthy landscapes and sustainable, resilient communities.
Soon, you will be able to join this collective and learn about stewarding seed orchards or seed collection areas at home, explore best practices, and connect with a seed saving community in the spirit and practice of reconciliation through the Southern Ontario Seed Saver Tool.
Together, CC’s network of experts and partners want to help southern Ontarians restore the power of seeds and return native plants to the landscape through ethical seed saving.
Small Seeds, Big Impact!
Local seed sources are important because they reflect the history and ecology of a local landscape. On today’s settled landscape, which has undergone severe alteration, wild, native seeds could use a helping hand to take root.
In southern Ontario, there is a committed community of Indigenous leaders, botanists, farmers, gardeners, growers, landscape architects, conservation organizations, restoration ecologists, and more who value native seeds and plants as autonomous species in addition to the benefits they provide, such as clean air and water, crop pollination, and habitat for wildlife.
The goal of restoring healthy landscapes with native plants also has the potential to inspire more community and workplace engagement programs, leverage green investment that could lead to an increase in local green jobs, and foster additional research that will deepen our understanding of native plants and our connection to them.
Although we won’t be able to recreate the vast natural landscapes that existed 200 years ago, the opportunity to be part of the Big Picture to ensure safe spaces for native seed in today’s communities creates a tangible legacy for tomorrow’s generations.
Join a Seed Saving Community
If you are new to native seed saving or already an expert, the Southern Ontario Seed Saver Tool can help you reach your goals to explore, start or expand native seed activities.
Your participation in the Southern Ontario Seed Saver Tool will help connect your seed story to others and contribute to an understanding of the Big Picture collective impact of seed saving efforts in the region. The results could also show opportunities for new seed orchards and sources, building links and relationships with people and the land. After completing the Seed Saver Tool, you will receive a Seed Saver package with additional resources and opportunities, including a best practices booklet, a presentation on growing native plants, and more!
Working in partnership with native plants, each of us can help safeguard the seeds that are key to a healthy landscape now and for future generations.