Take a tour of The Diggers Club's new Seed Saver Garden!

Since October 2022, we’ve taken over an abandoned site within the historic Heronswood gardens, that was once a production nursery and orchard and created an educational Seed Saver Garden. This garden is a celebration of the diversity of open pollinated, heirloom plants, and showcases their final lifecycle stage, when the plant has stopped its production, growth stage and is turning to the production of seeds.

Seeds protect and sustain life. They are a symbol of potential, of optimism and of what can become. Seeds represent the embodiment of everything that came before, connecting to past generations and to future generations. Through growth and education, this garden can empower others to be part of the seed saving journey.

For over forty years, The Diggers Club have championed the preservation of heirloom seeds. We are committed to preserving open pollinated, heirloom seed varieties to ensure diversity in edible and ornamental plants and maintain biological variation.

Open pollinated, heirloom varieties are genetically stable, so that you can grow and save your own seed, thus gaining a self-sufficiency edge to preserving varieties that have unique characteristics and superior flavors. Our ethos is to educate aspiring seed-savers, to demonstrate the ease of seed-saving and preservation of these wonderful plants. We aim to run on-site education programs, both in the neighboring education centre and in the garden and will host school programs to demonstrate to our future generations, just how easy it is to grow from seed, to harvest, and sow seed, so that they can enjoy learning these important life skills.

In Stage Two of the development of our Seed Saver Garden, we will showcase a cutting flower garden, showing a riot of colour of these open pollinated varieties. This demonstrates the beauty and importance of meadow gardens to pollinators, beneficial insects and to the ecology of our gardens. We have moved the iconic parterre garden to be part of the Seed Saver Garden for visitors to enjoy the seasonal variations and abundance of these edible plants. We also host a Renters Garden, with containerized water-saving wicking beds to highlight the accessibility of gardening in all spaces, no matter the size.

We welcome you to come and enjoy all the wonders of our new Seed Saver Garden!