Hear from experts, explore behind-the-scenes, swap seeds with gardeners

Highlights:

12th Annual Seed Swap
Burnstein Hall and Krehbiel Gallery, 2 – 4 p.m.

• The purpose of this program is to encourage gardeners to come together to share/swap seeds and to learn more about starting seeds, saving seeds, and related topics. (Participants are not required to bring seeds to share/swap. They can also just come and take some seeds home.)
• Gardeners are invited to bring saved seed and leftover seed packets to share and swap with other gardeners.
• Chicago Botanic Garden staff and volunteers, as well as outside guests, will have displays and will be available to answer questions and talk with Seed Swap attendees.

Lecture
Alsdorf Auditorium, 1 p.m.

Teresa Peterson

Utuhu Cistinna Win, is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and member of the Upper Sioux Community. Teresa recently wrote, Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden, University of Minnesota Press (June 2024). She and her uncle, Super LaBatte coauthored Voices from Pejuhutazizi: Dakota Stores and Storytellers, Minnesota Historical Society Press, which was selected as the Native American One Read by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s Understand Native Minnesota campaign. Teresa is also the author of Grasshopper Girl, a children’s book published by Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing. Her true passion is digging in her garden that overlooks the Mni Sota River valley and feeding friends and family.

Tour — The Dixon National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank
Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center, 10 – 11 a.m.

• Did you know the Chicago Botanic Garden has a seed bank? Take a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of the Dixon National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank in the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center with Dave Sollenberger, seed bank manager, and learn more about this crucial work. See the state-of-the-art lab—including all the unique seed prep equipment—and learn the multiple steps to seed banking from the seeds’ arrival to long-term storage.
• Limited to 12 participants.

Seeds of Yesteryear: Selections from the Rare Book Collection
Lenhardt Library, 11 a.m. – noon

• Go back in time through this viewing of seed catalog selections from the Lenhardt Library’s Rare Book Collection. Donna Herendeen, Lenhardt Library manager of public services, presents a variety of colorful seed catalogs from the late 1800s to early 1900s, including a rare “salesman’s sample” catalog from Chautauqua Nurseries that features plates joined by ribbons, bound accordion-style, and all in its own carrying case.
• Limited to 15 participants.