“All seeds are sacred, these seeds are connected to 10,000 years of human relationship to the land,” says Owen Taylor, co-founder of Philadelphia-based Truelove Seeds, who sells vegetable, herb and flower seeds that tell ancestral and regional stories. He adds, “seedkeeping refers to not just the saving of seeds, but also the keeping of seed stories, cultural information, traditions, recipes, rituals and so on.”
Taylor says many of the varieties in Truelove’s seed catalogue are seeds that farmers and gardeners have collected from others, through seed exchanges and family lineages. “Most of our growers are on their own search for their beloved varieties — and to provide an outlet for some of the crops from home,” he says. Seeds from Syria to the African diaspora, those that tell the story of Philadelphia’s history and a wide variety of other culturally important seeds are included in the catalogue.