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The Little Seed Library at Portage County District Library’s Windham Branch will offer free fruit, vegetable, herb and flower seeds, as well as provide educational resources for home gardening, seed saving, and food preservation. Seeds are now available at both the Garrettsville and Aurora Branches.
To select seeds, browse the PCDL Seed Catalog and Growing Guide for available seed packets and information about the variety, level of growing difficulty and level of seed saving difficulty. Please note that supplies of seeds are limited and are available on a first come-first serve basis.
For more information or to select seed varieties, visit the Windham, Garrettsville or Aurora Branch reference areas during open hours.
Seeds must be from open-pollinated, nongenetically modified, non-hybrid and/or heirloom plants that are NOT listed as invasive by the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Once you’ve harvested your dried seeds, bring them to the Windham Reference Desk in a sealed plastic bag along with the Donation Form. Donations for the 2026 growing season will be accepted beginning September 1, 2025.
To select seeds, browse the PCDL Seed Catalog and Growing Guide for available seed packets and information about the variety, level of growing difficulty and level of seed saving difficulty. Please note that supplies of seeds are limited and are available on a first come-first serve basis.
The 2025 growing season will open on March 20, 2025, and is open to any Portage County resident, regardless of age. No library card is required to access the collection. There is, however, a short form to fill out each time a patron removes or “checks out” seeds from the collection. Seed Library users may check out up to twenty (20) seed packets per household per yearly growing season, and ask that no more than five (5) packets per person be checked out at a time.
Experienced savers are encouraged to return seed to the collection, preferably twice the amount of seed they originally borrowed to sustain the collection long-term. Information on seed saving can be found both within the Little Seed Library Growing Guide and from PCDL library resources. Collected seeds should only be saved from open-pollinated, nongenetically modified, non-hybrid and/or heirloom plants (such as those grown from the small brown PCDL Little Seed Library packets) and should not be returned to the library unless the grower knows how to properly save them.
Interested in volunteering for the Seed Library? For information, please call 330-326-3145 or check the box on the Seed Donation Form.
The Little Seed Library at Portage County District Library’s Windham Branch will offer free fruit, vegetable, herb and flower seeds, as well as provide educational resources for home gardening, seed saving, and food preservation.
Contribute to and support the efforts of community gardeners as well as support the other food and gardening-based organizations operating within the Renaissance Family Center of Windham.
Develop a source of open-pollinated, heirloom, and hand-pollinated seed varieties that are best suited to grow well in our region and climate.
Prevent hunger, promote health and wellbeing, and offer tools for greater self-reliance and resilience.
The PCDL Little Seed Library is pleased to work with other organizations dedicated to making gardening, food production, and self-sufficiency skills more accessible to the public. In 2025 The Little Seed Library is joining forces with the Portage County OSU Extension Office and the Portage County Master Gardener Volunteers to provide gardening advice and diagnostic services as well as event expertise.
If you have questions regarding growing any of the seeds you have collected from the Little Seed Library, or if you have a plant disease or pest diagnostic question, please call (330) 235-7114 to speak with a Master Gardener Volunteer.
You can also drop off plant and insect samples in person on Wednesdays (9AM-11AM), April through October at the Portage County Extension Office, 705 Oakwood Street, Suite 103, Ravenna, OH 44266. Tell them the Little Seed Library sent you!