Lee Barnes: Roots, Seeds, and the Joy of Giving

Lee Barnes of Waynesville, North Carolina, has deep roots in seed saving—and an equally deep commitment to supporting organizations that advance conservation work. Here, he shares what drives his philanthropic giving to Seed Savers Exchange.

Some people come to conservation through study. Lee Barnes came to it through his hands.

Growing up, he helped his parents with their farm and seed store in rural North Carolina, spending hours manually weighing bulk seed sold to local gardeners and farmers. The work was quiet and methodical, but the seeds were anything but ordinary. Their shapes, sizes, and colors captivated Lee. The speckled butterbeans …the cornfield beans… each variety, he realized, was a small, living piece of someone’s agricultural history.

His relatives’ productive gardens deepened that reverence. It was in those garden plots that Lee learned to pick, sort, and preserve heirloom vegetables—and to appreciate what he calls “old-timey” flavors that no food stocked on grocery store shelves could replicate.

Then came the ‘German Johnson’ tomato: “Oh my, the flavor and texture!” Lee says.

“I fell in love with the ‘German Johnson,’” he recalls. “We got our seed from a small store owner in another county because there was no major commercial source for it back then.”

Even as a young man, Lee was already thinking beyond his own garden. What would happen to the variety when that seed saver retired or when illness or age reshaped their priorities? Thankfully, he didn’t wait to find out. Lee packed up and shared a quarter ounce of ‘German Johnson’ seeds—with Seed Savers Exchange and several small, regional seed companies—to ensure the variety would outlast any single steward.

That instinct to share, distribute, and build resilience into the system has only grown stronger over the decades.

Today, Lee Barnes is an educator with the Organic Growers School—he was named its 2026 Educator of the Year—as well as a facilitator of seed swaps, and a teacher who guides others in the art and practice of seed saving. He is also a philanthropist with a clear-eyed sense of purpose.

Lee oversees a family trust built through his parents’ lifelong investments. Rather than wait, he has chosen to see its impact realized in his own lifetime—giving away funds to the causes he knows best and believes in most.

“It feels good,” he says. “I donate to organizations where I am living and to places that I know will do good things with the funds. I am having fun with it.”

His passions range widely—from helping save the Eastern Hemlock tree to creating permaculture disaster-mitigation sites. More than 20 organizations benefit from his support, Seed Savers Exchange among them. Lee traces that relationship back nearly to the organization’s beginnings.

“I greatly appreciated the wisdom to disseminate seeds by having members, widely distributed, save and list what they had available,” he says, “versus just storing seeds in a central vault subject to all sorts of disruptions from floods, war, and other disasters.”

Lee also makes multi-year pledges—a practice he sees as fundamental to meaningful philanthropy.

“I know the impact these funds can have on an organization, just the ability to hire staff and plan for the future,” he says. “That flexibility and stability is important.”

For Lee Barnes, every seed shared and every dollar given is an act of the same faith: that what we tend to today will nourish someone we may never meet tomorrow.

—Brittnee Henry

Have questions about donating to Seed Savers Exchange? Please email us at donations@seedsavers.org. Tax id information: Seed Savers Exchange, Inc. 43-1214133