Seedy History

Preserving the plants at Bartram's is revolutionary — in more than one way.

by Mary Armstrong

Jessica Kourkounis OUT TO STUD: A leek that's gone to seed is one of the heirloom plant strains being preserved at Bartram's Garden. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Approach Lindbergh Boulevard any way you like. It's hard to imagine it as the setting of something magical. The closer you get, the harder it is to suspend disbelief. The stately mature trees that shadow the south side barely soften the soldierly rows of low, brick public housing.

Have a bit of faith. Follow the driveway that indicates Bartram's Garden. Suddenly, around the curve, you're in a rural area, gravel parking lined with shrubs that flower in season, flanking a huge meadow that slopes down to the river. Keep your eyes down to avoid the refineries on the other side. Look instead to the west and all the ancient stone buildings, some dating to before the Revolutionary War.

Follow the curving path to the coach house. No more horses, or feed, or feed's natural conclusion. Now the space is airy and light-filled. Today there are long folding tables with an assortment of people tucked in close, some with a steaming cup of tea at hand. You may find: the compact woman who tries to explain where in the Northeast she lives and whose eyes light up when someone exclaims, "St. Martin's Parish!" The young couple, new University City homeowners. Several from within walking distance on Woodland. Everybody has a box of something small and organic-looking in front of them. They busily separate the tiny items into neat piles, which end up in envelopes. But they're not destined for the Postal Service processing facility farther down Lindbergh. Instead they'll be sold in Bartram's gift store.

Welcome to a bit of community service at Bartram's Garden: a seed-saving workshop where people who love flowers and vegetables — the kinds that their grandparents and great-grandparents planted and enjoyed — gather from all over the region to help Bartram's maintain heirloom plants. This means volunteering on a Sunday afternoon to package up the dried seeds from last season. Doing so, they keep a Philadelphia tradition of several centuries thriving while linking with generations of gardeners back to the dawn of cultivation.

An affection for history, or gardening, or the DIY ethic, or striking blows against the corporate empire (or a heady combination of all four) prompts these volunteers to spend a few hours socializing while separating seeds from last year's gardens. The cleaned seeds go into those envelopes and are sold to help keep Bartram's afloat and give people another place to acquire heirloom plant stock. (Heirloom plants are strains that can be traced back to earlier eras. No patented material.) But the seeds are more than a source of income. They're links in a botanical lineage that goes back to before the country's birth.

Saving seeds is about quality. And heritage. Nancy Wygant, gardener at Bartram's who leads seed-saving, has been saving seeds since she first had her own plot in the community garden at 47th and Chester.

"What really caught me was a note from the Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa. I'd been offering the 'Party' cherry tomato. The Exchange wrote saying the company that sold that seed has gone out of business." SSE asked for some of her seed to maintain that tomato on its farm. "This piece of genetic material exists," says Wygant, "because I decided to save it!"

That gave Wygant something to contemplate. "You never know ahead of time which variety has some quirk of genetics that make it just right to resist a disease. Or a change of climate. We need to preserve all that elegantly, naturally evolved genetic diversity."

Seed saving takes you right back to your ancestors in agriculture. Before that, it was about gathering rather than reaping. To reap, you have to save some seed from this year's crop to sow next season. It's been done that way as long as there has been planting.

But there is now a rebellious edge to seed saving. Monsanto, a giant of genetically modified seed production, has kept numerous farmers hopping through legal hoops for years. Mississippi farmer Homan McFarling insists that farmers have a right to save seed after they have paid for the first round. He has done so. Monsanto counters that their seeds are "intellectual property" and that farmers are doing something akin to violating copyright by saving them. (McFarling's nine years of legal battles seem to be winding down; on Jan. 7 the Supreme Court let stand the decision of $375,000 in damages to Monsanto.) In 2005 Monsanto purchased Seminis Seeds, which controlled 20 percent to 40 percent of the vegetable seed market. If you feel corporations have no right dictating the process of reaping and sowing, the path of rebellion involves saving heirloom seeds.

Saving seeds began on the Bartram property before the Revolution with John Bartram. A self-taught botanist, he traveled from Canada to Florida, collecting seed material for propagation, study and dissemination. His knowledge was so widely respected that he was appointed Royal Botanist. The Bartram family maintained his tradition by operating the farm as a nursery for several generations. Railroad magnate Andrew Eastwick bought the place in the mid-19th century, vowing to preserve it without change. When his estate was ready to dispose of the property, says Wygant, Bartram's Garden became the first piece of city park that was acquired strictly for recreation. (Fairmount Park was designed to protect the city's water supply.) Wygant says the boxwood growing outside the restored Bartram home's kitchen is thought to have been on-site when Bartram was also.

In the fall, some of the healthiest specimens are allowed to go to seed. All varieties call for letting the seeds dry, then separating them from the rest of the plant material, which is were we rejoin our happy, chattering gardeners. In exchange for their patient sorting, volunteers will get some of these bits of history to take home.

Wygant oversees the activities and fields questions: Will volunteers handle any seeds known to be descended from plants handled by Bartram? Yes, though not necessarily from plants always on the property.

Wygant says that after the garden's period of benign neglect under Eastwick, it is not clear what survived. But, the Willing's Barbados Pepper has a story. The same Willing family after whom Willing's Alley is named were very prominent in Philadelphia at the time John Bartram was not only traveling the eastern part of North America gathering plants, but also exchanging seeds with people all over. When Charles Willing requested a stinging hot pepper, Bartram procured the seeds from the West Indies, and they have been in propagation in these parts ever since. And yes, you can take some of that magic home with you.

(m_armstrong@citypaper.net)

Bartram's Seed Saving, Sun., Feb. 10, 1-3 p.m., no charge, 54th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard, 215-729-5281, bartramsgarden.org.