The Maricopa Native Seed Library: Inspiring and Equipping the Community to Create Habitat at Home

Introduction
“For the first time in its history, gardening has taken on a role that transcends the needs of the gardener. Like it or not, gardeners have become important players in the management of our nation’s wildlife” (Tallamy 2019). This change has been prompted by the expansion of urban areas and accompanying habitat loss, as well as threats to wildlands including fire, invasive species, and climate change (Tallamy 2009).

There is a dearth of native seed and plant sources in Maricopa County, so consequently many residential landscapes do not support wildlife. Instead home landscapes tend to have low species diversity, and the plants that are there are often nonnative or do not have high wildlife value. Very few home landscapes are intentionally built to support and attract wildlife through careful selection of high value native plants and other techniques such as minimizing fertilizers and pesticides.

The Maricopa Native Seed Library was founded in August 2020 to help the community make the paradigm shift to more intentional gardening for wildlife through education and by increasing the availability of native seed. As opposed to seed banks that store seed for posterity, seed libraries give away seed. They are typically associated with brick and mortar libraries and often ask patrons to return seeds that they grow out. Beyond that, the seed is free, usually with a monthly limit to make sure there is enough seed for everyone.

The Maricopa Native Seed Library is unique among seed libraries because it focuses on native “ornamentals” as opposed to food plants such as tomatoes and lettuce. Specifically, the seed library was founded to help support pollinators in the landscape and has intentionally offered high value native nectar and butterfly/moth larval host plants, especially those that are not commercially available in the local area. Plants include native shrubs, trees, vines, grasses, perennials, and annuals.

The overall goal of the seed library is to inspire and equip the community to create a “living landscape” at home that provides high quality habitat for people, plants and the wildlife that depends on them. Together, these individual home landscapes can, over time, combine to create a new “national park at home” along the lines of Douglas Tallamy’s vision outlined in Nature’s Best Hope (2019). By doing so, not only can the public enjoy less landscape maintenance and lower water bills, but also reap the health benefits of a living landscape that supports wildlife in a meaningful way.

Implementation
By design, the seed library was to follow a distributed model in order to reach as many people as possible across Maricopa County. The COVID-19 pandemic made this much more difficult, but as of this writing the seed library is currently physically available at three locations: the Fannin Library at Phoenix College, the Gateway Community College Library, and the Red Mountain Library at Mesa Community College (MCC). In addition, we temporarily implemented a mail order service to reach people more broadly during the pandemic, and tabled at farmers markets, giving out free seed and native plant information.

While most seed libraries obtain seed through donations from seed companies, seed for the Maricopa Native Seed Library is collected by Danielle Carlock, author and founder of the seed library, a library faculty member at Scottsdale Community College (SCC). Seed collecting takes place at the Tonto National Forest (under permit) as well as at the SCC campus and the author’s home garden. There are about 50 native species currently in the seed library, with more species to be added. We also offer a small amount of food plants seeds that we have obtained by donation.

The website contains plant profiles for each of the native species in the seed library. Each profile includes information about germination, growing requirements, and specific wildlife values (eg. nectar plant). The seed library has offered several free workshops including “Introduction to Native Plant Gardening in Central Arizona,” “Pollinator Gardening in the Low Desert of Central Arizona,” and “Starting from Seed: Growing Native Plants in the Low Desert.” The website includes recordings of the workshops as well as other information about native plant gardening.

In order to bring the plants to life, the seed library is developing demonstration gardens at SCC and the Red Mountain campus of MCC. The intention of the gardens is for the public to be able to view the plants up close and then go into the seed library to make selections as well as to serve as a future seed source. The SCC demonstration garden builds upon work done by the Center for Native and Urban Wildlife (CNUW) to create wildlife friendly garden spaces on campus. Additionally, collaborating with faculty at MCC Red Mountain campus on an AZ Lottery Gives Back grant, the author created a 30-plant ethnobotanical garden that builds on the existing gardens already in place, especially the cienega habitat. A field guide to each garden is forthcoming.

Accomplishments to Date
In the fall semester of 2020 we gave out 1,061 seed packets and are on track to do much more this spring semester with over 1,700 packets given out as of early April 2021. Some of the most popular plants have been easy to grow and more well-known species such as Penstemon parryi, Asclepias subulata, and Gaillardia aristata. However, we have been surprised and pleased that many lesser-known species have been taken quickly, including Acourtia wrightii, Cirsium neomexicanum, Oenothera elata hookeri, Erigeron divergens, Chilopsis linearis arcuata, Rhus ovata, and Maurandya antirrhiniflora. Indeed, our supplies of some of these species were limited and we could not meet demand.

We have produced a series of plant palettes for Maricopa County and surrounding areas to assist local gardeners who want to support more pollinators in their landscapes. Palettes focus on high value native nectar and larval host plants and are available on our website.

In addition to our workshops, we have been asked to present to several organizations, including the Audubon Society, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, and the Central Arizona Butterfly Association. We have also conducted workshops at the Seed Library Summit and with the American Library Association Sustainability Roundtable about how to set up a native seed library.

From July 2020 to April 2021, in collaboration with the Phoenix Chapter of the Arizona Native Plant Society, we distributed seed balls to Society members and supporters and collected data on germination. While the lack of both monsoon and winter rains impacted germination negatively, we did have some plant establishment and have learned that in the future seed balls with less clay may be better suited to our changing climate.

Overall the seed library has been well received by the public, the media, and non-profit conservation organizations. It is becoming clear that we have identified an unmet need in the community.

Future Goals and Next Steps
While the sabbatical which launched the seed library ended in May 2021, plans are in the works to keep the Maricopa Seed Library going. We have been awarded a Maricopa Center for Learning and Innovation Horizon Grant to fund student interns, who will learn about the importance of native plants, how to identify them, how to ethically collect and process native seed, and how to germinate/propagate native plants. Interns will work under the direction of MCC Geosciences and Sustainability faculty Dr. Niccole Cerveny and Phoenix College biosciences faculty Dr. Elena Ortiz. Their work will form the backbone to supply the Maricopa Native Seed Library moving forward. Also, participating libraries and volunteers will assist with processing and packaging seed. There will be learning opportunities for our interns in partnership with the Tonto National Forest, the Arizona Native Plant Society, CNUW, and the Southwest Native Agriculture Center. We will introduce interns to other ways of knowing, especially indigenous ways of knowing, about such things as connections to land and place that can be explored through native plants. In addition to the internships, we will work across the curriculum at the Maricopa Community Colleges to tie the seed library to student learning through a variety of opportunities related to service learning and cocurricular activities.

For many native plants of the Sonoran Desert, locating germination information is difficult. Another goal of the seed library is to more thoroughly document germination requirements for our native species and make the information open access.

Another goal is to expand seed library offerings. There are a whole host of species that are not commercially available that we would like to add to the seed library but have either had timing problems with collecting or haven’t located a large enough population to collect from, including Aristolochia watsonii, Carlowrightia arizonica, Passiflora arizonica, Eriogonum abertium, Hibiscus denudatus, Mirabilis laevis, and Phaseolus angustissimus.

Finally, we would like to identify grant funds and partners to build a pollinator pathway across Maricopa County that connects existing pollinator habitat across all property types (municipal, higher education, private, etc.) and recruit local homeowners along the pathway to join in by providing them seed/plants and native plant gardening education.

The Maricopa Native Seed Library has demonstrated that distribution of native seeds through a seed library can be an effective avenue for engaging the community in plant conservation and building habitat at home. We encourage other libraries and organizations to consider starting native seed libraries for these purposes.

References Tallamy, D. 2009. Bringing nature home: How you can sustain wildlife with native plants. Timber Press, Portland, OR.
Tallamy, D. 2019. Nature’s best hope. Timber Press, Portland, OR.

Article first published in the 2021 Plant Press Arizona (https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.68.196/tp4.107.myftpupload.com/wp-c…)