Every heirloom seed tells a story. At least that’s Jere Gettle’s philosophy. There is some debate in the gardening community about the definition of an heirloom seed – Gettle’s seed company, Baker Creek, defines an heirloom seed as any that has been passed down through generations and has a history – but some say one must be at least 50 years old to earn the distinction.

Before he was the owner of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co., he was a young boy living on his family’s farm, and he was obsessed with seeds. He learned to read by poring over seed catalogues, and when he got older, he began saving seeds and bringing them to flea markets and swap meets. At age 17, he put out a seed catalogue of his own featuring 70 heirloom varieties.

(photo courtesy of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds / RareSeeds.com)

Now Gettle is 37 and Baker Creek, based in Mansfield, Missouri, a town of 1,200 in the southern part of the state, puts out an annual catalogue that features approximately 1,850 varieties of heirloom seeds. Every fall, Baker Creek hosts the National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa, which attracts 20,000 visitors annually. Featuring a giant squash tower, vendor exhibition booths, tastings and a pumpkin contest, the expo has been more successful than the Baker Creek team ever dreamed. 2018 marked its eighth year – the event wrapped up on Sunday, Sept. 13, and will occur again next fall.

“It started out just as an idea to bring gardeners and like-minded people together,” said Kathy McFarland, Baker Creek’s media and public relations representative. “From the beginning, it wasn’t expected to be an annual event. It was expected to be a one-time thing.”

The expo’s success mirrors a national growing interest in gardening. Ian Baldwin, an analyst and commentator for the 2018 National Gardening Survey, said that in 2017, 77 percent of households reported working with plants inside their homes or in their gardens. That’s the highest participation rate the survey has seen since it began collecting data 35 years ago.

It’s in large part thanks to millennials, Baldwin said. People under 35 were slow to take up gardening due to the economic downturn of 2008 and a general trend toward reaching milestones like marriage and home ownership later in life. But now they’re major spenders. Baldwin said that in 1997, the biggest gardening spenders were women over the age of 55. Now, it’s males under 35.

He attributes the recent boon to millennials’ skepticism of mass consumerism, concerns about the environment and an overall rise in attention paid to health and wellness.

“I give [millennials] credit for this,” Baldwin said. “They started the grow-your-own boom, which is still booming.”

That’s where heirloom seeds come in. The other distinction Baker Creek uses to classify an heirloom seed is that it must be open pollinated (meaning it can pollinate without the help of a gardener or a laboratory) and produce a plant that’s the same from year to year. Varieties that require this kind of intervention are also called hybrids, which McFarland said might contain fewer nutrients than heirloom varieties, but are not necessarily bad. Usually, they’re developed to help transport produce long distances – tomatoes, for instance, have been bred to hold up better in a truck and last longer on supermarket shelves.

“We’re seeing a big movement toward people wanting to know where their food has come from, how it’s grown, et cetera,” McFarland said.

If a seed is a story, it’s fitting that they’re becoming available to be checked out at a growing number of public libraries. McFarland said she has seen a rise in libraries housing seed collections along with books to encourage home gardening and promote biodiversity.

Santa Monica’s Fairview Branch Library began offering seeds early in 2018. Patrons can take home packets of seeds, grow the plants to maturity and harvest their seeds for donation if possible. Growers, however, are not required to return the exact seeds they borrowed.

(photos courtesy of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds / RareSeeds.com)

Seed Library of Los Angeles also hosts seed exchange meetings and collections at various locations throughout the city, including the Venice High School Learning Garden and the Altadena Public Library. For a $10 suggested donation, members can check out seeds and gain access to educational resources. Seed Library of Los Angeles encourages seed collection and donation as well, but does not require it, as it can be hard to guarantee seed saving will be successful.

Eleuterio Navarro, chair of Seed Library of Los Angeles, said that the organization’s goal is to conserve the biodiversity of our food systems. As large corporate seed companies buy up smaller seed houses, he said, they might leave less popular seeds on the shelf.

“A corporation’s intent is to grow for profit,” Navarro said.

This can prevent them from ever being grown again. Less variation in crop groups can leave food sources vulnerable to blight.

That’s why Gettle and his wife have dedicated themselves to collecting rare heirloom seeds. McFarland said Baker Creek often receives donations of large heirloom seed collections from people who have inherited them from older relatives, and Baker Creek also makes many seed donations to libraries.

And there’s their annual celebrations of heirloom produce. Before the expo every year, McFarland said there is a Baker Creek crew in Petaluma harvesting the squash for the 20-foot squash tower. This year, a pumpkin grower named Richard Larsen etched a design into a pumpkin he expected to weigh 1,000 pounds by the time of the expo.

“The main word I would use is excitement,” McFarland said. “It is phenomenal, the number of varieties of things that are there on exhibit.”