Building communal roots by sharing seeds
EMRY DINMAN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years AGO
Stacey Bishop holds up a tub full of marigold seeds in front of a large patch of the small fiery flower as her dog, Cleo, stands by.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald
A small bucket full of dried sunflower heads sits overturned on a table in the garden of Moses Lake resident Stacey Bishop.
Stacey Bishop holds up a bucket of stringy hollyhock seeds in front of her Moses Lake home.
Stacey Bishop reaches over a number of potted plants and bundles of vegetation at her garden in Moses Lake Thursday, during one of the last few days before the first major frost of the year.
Stacey Bishop holds up a bin full of marigold seeds at her Moses Lake home.
Stacey Bishop holds up a small bucket filled with the dried heads of her sunflowers, each brimming with seeds ready to be planted in the coming spring.
MOSES LAKE — Gardening can be a deeply personal activity, as residents spend hours by themselves making their yards bloom each year.
But gardeners can also build community with others enjoying hobby. One way they do that is by sharing seeds, letting others take the fruits of their labor — sometimes literal fruits, other times the seeds that have been pulled from flowers, or else bulbs — and grow gardens of their own.
That’s what Moses Lake gardener Stacey Bishop is starting to do with her bountiful flower garden. When she moved back to Moses Lake, she brought with her seeds taken from the hollyhocks she had grown in Montana. Then, when the marigolds she had planted from a few store-bought packages began to rapidly multiply, she started collecting the seeds, loath to throw them away or toss them in the compost.
“I’ve had so many (marigolds) that I’ve thrown them out into the wind to broadcast where they may,” Bishop said. “So many things reseed, so what do you do? It just seems a waste to not at least collect them, and once you collect them what are you going to do?”
Though her marigold patch kept getting larger, the seeds still piled up in plastic tubs. Bishop would go out throughout the season and shake the bins, introducing some air to make sure they didn’t start getting moldy.
For a while, she had wanted to begin sharing those seeds with other gardeners in the community. Yes, free seeds are naturally less expensive than those bought, especially after pandemic-related price increases and shortages. But mostly, it’s just a good way to meet your neighbors, Bishop said.
“Of course the prices of everything have gone up so much, but also I’ll take any opportunity to meet with another gardener in town,” Bishop said.
So, Bishop took to a local gardening Facebook group, “Gardeners of Moses Lake Wa,” to reach out to fellow gardeners who wanted to exchange seeds, or at least help empty out the tubs full of seeds tucked away in various corners of the Bishop household. She brought seeds of marigolds, seeds from the hollyhocks that traveled with her from Montana, and even a number of seeds that Bishop had herself been gifted by another gardener.
A few locals left with seeds to start their next gardens, Bishop got to meet a few other gardeners and make a few friends.
“To get out and meet someone of a similar interest, that’s a good way to do it,” Bishop said.
