One highlight of this year’s Garden & Green Living Expo: a special seed swap celebrating the preservation and sharing of biodiversity and saving open pollinated seeds.

Tickets are on sale now for the event happening Feb. 13-15 at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison. Garden & Green Living Expo offers education, enrichment and shopping opportunities to prepare for the upcoming growing season. Best of all, proceeds support PBS Wisconsin programming, educational initiatives and events you love.

In anticipation of Garden & Green Living Expo, PBS Wisconsin spoke with Seed Savers Exchange, who will host the seed swap from 2-4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13.

PBS Wisconsin: Tell us about Seed Savers Exchange and what your organization does.

Seed Savers Exchange: Seed Savers Exchange is dedicated to preserving the biodiversity of our food system, and that takes place in a variety of ways. We have a seed bank here, just outside of Decorah, Iowa, at Heritage Farm where there are more than 20,000 varieties of food crops, including vegetables, seeds, flower seeds, herbs — even potato tubers — and we have orchards with apple scionwood. All of this is preserved and also shared with the broader community. That takes place through the Exchange website and platform.

We have a number of educational avenues where we can teach about the importance of biodiversity and saving open pollinated seeds, as well as the stories that come with them.

The temperature-controlled seed bank at Seed Savers Exchange.

PBS Wisconsin: For those who don’t know, why is this important?

Seed Savers Exchange: We’re celebrating 50 years this year, and our organization came about because the co-founders wanted to find other people who had heirloom seeds in their care. They had gotten seeds passed down from one of the co-founder’s, Diane’s, grandfather. These were German pink tomatoes and Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glory.

They were saved and shared for generations, and Diane was the new keeper of these seeds. Without that exchange, these seeds would have been lost, and along with it, the stories, the flavors and all the memories that go with them.

How that looks today is, people are saving and sharing seeds from their backyard gardens and sharing the recipes and the stories. Much of what makes the seed collection at Heritage Farm special is the cultural significance of the seeds and the opportunity to share them with the community through the Exchange.

The Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa.

PBS Wisconsin: How does exchanging seeds and preserving heirloom varieties promote biodiversity?

Seed Savers Exchange: The bigger seed industry over the past few decades has come to be just a few different major companies. Over time, we’ve lost a lot of diversity in different varieties through that. One of our goals here is to make sure we have lots of different varieties for various different purposes. Some varieties might do better in a southern climate, some might do better in a northern climate and some might be more drought tolerant. We’re making sure we preserve a wide range of these different traits that could potentially be bred out with bigger companies.

PBS Wisconsin: What we can expect from Seed Savers Exchange at Garden & Green Living Expo this year?

Seed Savers Exchange: We will be hosting a seed swap from 2-4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13, and we encourage folks to bring seeds if they have some that they’ve saved from their garden, or if they have excess seed from whatever situation. We expect that they’re open pollinated, and we hope that they include information about the seed, whatever they have. We’re hoping for crop type, variety name and maybe year harvested. Also, if it is an heirloom variety or something that they’ve got from family members or any information that they’d like to be passed along would be nice.

We’ll be bringing a bunch of seeds ourselves. We’re not requiring people to bring their own seed, but we are encouraging it. We’re going to have a limit of two varieties per person, and then if they bring their own seed, then they can have an extra variety.

PBS Wisconsin: What are the oldest seeds that you have in the seed bank?

Seed Savers Exchange: I’m thinking of one variety that I can’t remember the name of right now, but it dates back maybe to early 1900.

Physical seed, we probably still have seeds in the collection from when it originally started in 1975. I’ve done some germination tests on some seeds from the early to mid-80s and sometimes it’s surprising that they come back with a good germination rate!

PBS Wisconsin: How can people get involved throughout the year with Seed Savers Exchange?

Seed Savers Exchange: We have several virtual events, including an apple grafting class, where participants learn how to graft their apple tree. We also have a National Seed Swap Day event.

Another big educational opportunity is Seed School, which happens every year in the fall, and it’s a multi-week course where people hop onto a virtual webinar and also can interact with other participants across the country and learn from experts about best practices on how to save seeds.

We have several other programs, but another one I’ll mention is our ADAPT program, in which there are different crop trials that our evaluation and trials manager prepares. You receive seeds for each trial and you grow them out. There’s an online platform where you can share your results and any questions or descriptions you have, and different traits and characteristics of each variety. It’s like a big community platform where you can talk to other gardeners and farmers and get feedback from people.

Images courtesy of Seed Savers Exchange.