John Coykendall was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee by his mother and father—a school teacher and a banker, respectively. John’s grandfather owned a farm and was a congressman by profession. In 1954, when John was 11, his father taught him to plant potatoes and corn. It was then that John found his love of gardening. “I still get the same thrill out of digging new potatoes that I did the first year!” remembers John.
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Jim Tjepkema, like many seed savers, gardened as a child with his parents. “My dad always had a garden as I was growing up. I helped some with planting it,” he remembers, “You know, my mother liked to do canning too, so we always had canned vegetables and some frozen as well, so that started me out in gardening.”
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Even though George McLaughlin’s academic and professional background is in theology rather than biology or agriculture, George has been playing in the dirt for as long as he can remember.
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Over 26 years, Bill Minkey has donated nearly 500 varieties of tomatoes, beans, lettuce, and peas to the Seed Savers Exchange seed bank collection, and in 2017, Bill listed 1,011 varieties in the Exchange.
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As these intrepid visionaries demonstrate, seeds are all about community. Like-minded gardeners and seed savers build this community on the Exchange, a network for sharing and swapping seeds.
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Some of Mike Dunton’s earliest childhood memories are of being out in the garden with his mother or grandparents.
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In the late 1990s, Steve found Seed Savers Exchange, and the tomatoes he craved, but he also discovered what ultimately became the passion of a lifetime: heirloom beans.
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Use this list of terms to expand your knowledge and understanding of seed saving and gardening. The following definitions are drawn from The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving, edited by Lee Buttala and Shanyn Siegel and published by Seed Savers Exchange.
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Glenn Drowns’ passion for gardening started when he was two and a half years old. “I used to crawl through the fence to our neighbors’ to escape from my mom, and help [Evelyn, the neighbor] plant her garden,” recalls Glenn, fondly.
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Bill McDorman started High Altitude Garden Seeds (which later became Seeds Trust) in 1984 while living in a small mountain town in Idaho. He hoped to offer varieties best suited to the cold, short-growing season of the area.
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