It’s the seedy time of summer. This week of the fourth of July we’re working from the premise that foundational to good citizenship is great stewardship of place (plants and people) and we are looking to the desert Southwest in conversation with Alexandra Zamecnik, Executive Director of Native Seed/SEARCH. For more than four decades, Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) has stewarded the seeds of the desert Southwest and Mexico. Founded in 1983 in response to the concern of farmers, gardeners, Indigenous community members, and conservationists about the devastating loss of seed diversity, NS/S today conserves more than 1,800 regional culturally and climatically significant seed varieties. The work is not only the preservation of these seeds for the future, but also for their distribution today, celebrating and in support of communities of this desert region who have stewarded these seeds for time far longer than memory.

I met Alexandra and many of her team back in 2021, while researching What We Sow took me to the NS/S HQ in Tucson. I am so pleased to welcome her and share this growing work forward finally. Enjoy!

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