Show Your Love with Native Seeds

Collecting Seeds

From the time the spring ephemerals start to drop their seeds in spring until the last of the fall bloomers’ seeds have ripened, our chapter members were armed with organza bags, paper bags, markers, and clippers in hand to harvest native seeds from local native gardens, with permission of course.

Out of her passion for collecting native seeds, chapter President Marlene Smith created our “Deeply Rooted in Native Seed Collecting” presentation, which she presented virtually to Wild Ones Greater Baltimore and Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay last fall.

Cleaning Seeds

In addition to collecting seeds, we held two seed saving workshops at our local public libraries in collaboration with the St. Mary’s Public Library and the Southern Maryland Audubon Society. Learning the difference between “Time Sensitive” seeds and “Mama’s Boys” helped the seed cleaners understand how to best separate the seeds from the chaff and how to store seeds, as viable seeds are critical to successful propagation.

And we took the show on the road to Mount Rainier where we gave our presentation and held a hands-on workshop at Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mount Rainier, Maryland.

To celebrate our chapter members and first year as a chartered chapter, we held our first Seeds and Swag Social in December, where members learned seed cleaning techniques and created chapter logo shirts and tote bags.

And we could think of no better way to share our passion for native seeds than holding a Valentine’s Day seed cleaning workshop at the College of Southern Maryland La Plata campus. Thank you to chapter members Maddie Kaba (Library Assistant) and Tracey Stuller (Professor of Biology) for inviting us to teach students, faculty, and staff about different seed heads and how to clean and package seeds for the CSM seed library that will open next month. Participants cleaned a variety of seeds that were collected last fall from their Bee Campus pollinator gardens. Seeds cleaned include: A. syriaca (Common Milkweed), E. perfoliatum (Common Boneset), M. punctata (Bee Balm), P. digitalis (Foxglove beardtongue), R. hirta (Black Eyed Susan), S. novae-angliae (New England Aster), A. foeniculum (Anise Hyssop(, E. purpurea (Purple Coneflower).

Sharing Seeds

Collecting and cleaning seeds is not enough. Our goal in collecting seeds is to further Wild Ones’ vision of native plants and natural landscapes thriving in every community. Our chapter members distributed native seeds at various events throughout the fall and winter, including seed swaps, outreach events, and winter sowing workshops.

Winter Sowing

Speaking of winter sowing, did you know that winter sowing is an economical way to germinate native plants in the middle of winter? With just a few materials that you can probably find around your house, it’s a fun and easy activity for all ages. The concept of winter sowing was introduced in 2000 by Trudi Davidoff and has since been officially recognized by the USDA. It has become wildly popular as more and more people have discovered this fabulous way to grow plants — especially natives. Watch as chapter member and founder of Nurture Natives, Esther Bonney, shows you how easy the process is in our Quick Start video below. And visit our Deeply Rooted in Winter Sowing blog for more information.

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In collaboration with Nurture Natives, we instructed students in the Natural Resources Management class of chapter member Dorothy Birch in a winter sowing workshop. The 18 students winter sowed 36 milk jugs of native plants and pollinator plants for their spring plant sale and for new native gardens planned for their school campus.

In addition to our seed saving workshops at our local public libraries, we also held winter sowing workshops in collaboration with the St. Mary’s Public Library and the Southern Maryland Audubon Society.

Seed College

To start the new year, President Marlene Smith and Membership Chair Lynne Wheeler created and presented “Seed College – Deeply Rooted in Propagating Native Plants” at our January 2025 Chapter Garden Chat. Our goal is to share our love of propagating native plants with others so they can experience the joy of growing native plants from seeds. Learn about methods to “sow in the snow”; “seed sitting”; “winter sowing”; sowing inside in a house, hoop house, or greenhouse; and how commercials growers sow and grow native plants.

In addition to the recording of the virtual presentation above, we are happy to share the PDF of the presentation with you.

Seed Libraries

Stratification-o-rama at Bee Lab

In addition to Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay, some of the other groups in attendance at the Stratification-o-Rama included: RePollinate Anne Arundel, Bowie Green Team, Greenbelt Seedbox Team, PG Department of Parks and Rec, UP Sustainability, and more.

Advocacy

Beyond our local love of native seeds, Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay also advocated for the release of federal funds to support the Mid Atlantic Regional Seed Bank (MARSB). In October 2024, “Wild Ones chapters across the Mid-Atlantic signed a letter in support of funding for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank (MARSB), a dedicated organization that has been working to solve native seed supply challenges for over 30 years. Despite their decades of work, MARSB has had to operate with limited funding. But now, thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – Ecological Restoration (BIL-ER), there is a unique opportunity to secure a portion of the undisbursed funds that could help address these critical shortages.” ~ Wild Ones

Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay’s activities around native seeds support the three pillars of Wild Ones. We invite you to join a Wild Ones chapter near you today!