There’s a new library in town, home to thousands of items available to the public.
And they all fit inside a small vintage catalog cabinet tucked inside an office at the Elizabeth River Project.
The Norfolk nonprofit is launching its first native seed library offering residents, businesses and organizations free access to seeds they can plant in their own gardens or along local shorelines.
The concept is not completely new to the area. Several local public libraries, including Suffolk and Norfolk, offer seed libraries mostly focused on gardening.
The Elizabeth River Project’s version will have some typical flowers and plants, along with a greater focus on marsh grasses.
Luísa Black Ellis, director of resilience and community engagement, said the nonprofit noticed that many plants used in local restoration work were coming from elsewhere, including Florida, Delaware and the Midwest.
“The whole reason to plant native plants is because they're adapted to our climate,” she said. “They're adapted to our ecology. So when we're planting these native plants from these faraway places, we don't necessarily know that they are actually as climate resilient as we're hoping.”
Local environmental groups are working to restore wetlands grasses called Spartina around Hampton Roads, for example.
Ellis said most of the grasses imported from outside the region are genetically identical.
“So if just one insect or disease comes through, that one set of genetics is vulnerable,” she said. “That means the whole wetlands collapse because they're all coming from that same single genetic stock.”
Officials now seek to boost not only the amount but also the biodiversity of plants used in Hampton Roads.
To that end the nonprofit partnered with Old Dominion University’s Wetland Plant & Restoration Lab to study species’ propagation methods.
The effort also received a $35,000 grant from the Virginia Beach-based JP Doherty Foundation.
Ellis said anyone can stop by ERP’s headquarters on Colley Avenue for seeds. They just hope that recipients come back someday to return some of what they harvest.
The seeds were collected from as many places as possible around the region, including a small private island on the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake.
That was a particularly valuable find because the land is undeveloped and home to a rare, truly native natural shoreline, Ellis said.
The nonprofit’s Seed Keepers initiative also centers Indigenous traditions known as seed keeping.
“It’s important to us as people who are working in the environmental field to acknowledge that there's a legacy of stewardship on this land,” Ellis said. “There's a context of restoration and of protection that we're stepping into, and seed saving is a huge component of that legacy.”
While working on the initiative, the Elizabeth River Project connected with Diane Wilson, an author who lives on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and recently published a novel called “The Seed Keeper.”
The book tells the story of four Dakota women between 1862 and 2002, each with individual and community-level relationships with protecting seeds for future generations.
Wilson told WHRO she was inspired by real stories from local elders and food sovereignty groups.
“There was a magic to the idea of those seeds, because they had been protected by families for generations,” Wilson said.
Seed keeping refers to protecting seeds, keeping them dry and cool and “continuing to be in relation with them on a day-to-day basis” including planting, Wilson said.
It’s different from the concept of a seed bank, where seeds are stored but not used, more like an agricultural time capsule or extinction insurance.
Wilson will speak at the Elizabeth River Project next week.
“What I'll really be emphasizing is what we have in common in terms of protecting seeds. Whether they are for a wetland or for traditional foods, this is the work that is really important to all of us as human beings,” she said.
“This is what brings us back, I think, to our greatest nature as human beings, the relationship that we are supposed to be in with nature, which is to take care of each other.”
The Elizabeth River Project’s Seed Keeper event featuring the new library and a lecture by Wilson will be Thursday, April 3 at 6 p.m. at the Ryan Resilience Lab in Norfolk.
