5 Books on Seeds
In anticipation of Destination Books’ first popups of 2026 (the Freedom Farmer’s Market at the Carter Center on Saturday morning February 28th and the Wylde Center’s Seed and Scion Exchange on Sunday, March 1st) let’s start at the beginning — with seed related books.
Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth
For over twenty years this book has been a mainstay reference book providing detailed information on each vegetable including: botanical classification, flower structure and pollination, isolation distance, population size, caging or hand pollination and proper method to grow, harvest, dry clean and store the seeds.
It’s well organized and includes growing tips for different regions of the U.S. Seed to Seed reminds us that few things can match the usefulness of a good, soon-to-be-dogeared, reference book.
The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables by Adam Alexander
In this book the globetrotting Alexander, combines his personal experiences with the history and heritage of a variety of vegetables. His prose is fast-paced, breezy and loaded with fun facts whether diving into the evolutionary history of the tomato or discussing the color of carrots. Each chapter reads like a mini documentary you’d see on the Veggie Gardening Channel.
I guess it should not come as any surprise since Alexander’s day job is as a film and television producer.
The Seed Underground by Janisse Ray
This nonfiction collection is mixture of Ray’s upbringing in the southeastern Georgia, her own experiences pursing and preserving seeds, and portraits of the “revolutionaries” who have influenced and inspired her along the way. Ray’s book is more lyrical and longing in tone and she is also a no-nonsense activist, highly critical of large American Food System. In the chapter “What is Broken” she lists the reasons why seed diversity is important.
Cool Flowers: How to Grow and Enjoy Long-Blooming Hardy Annual Flowers Using Cool Weather Techniques by Lisa Mason Ziegler
Recommended by a flower vendor when I was doing a popup last year, I ordered this book and kept it in storage waiting for the right time to display it.
That moment has come because Ziegler’s book (kind of a classic considering it’s been in print for over a decade) is a combination of specifics of what, when and how to grow annual and perennial flowers. It includes detailed instructions on how to grow them from seed. This is important as Ziegler writes:
“Starting your own plants at the right time is the only way to be sure of having a fabulous hardy annual garden. It is almost impossible to find the plants you want in the fall or early spring unless you start them yourself. If hardy plants are available at all on the retail market, it is seldom in the variety you want or at the correct planting time for your garden seeds yourself is the way to go.”
The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice by Simon Parkin
Founded by world renown botanist, Nikolai Vavilov the Plant Institute of Leningrad was the flagship of seed and botany research, which began in the 1920s. Eventually It held hundreds of thousands of seeds, but when the Germans invaded Russia in June of 1941, they laid siege to Leningrad implementing a strategy of starving the population into submission. The driving plot: “As employees of the world’s first seed bank, the botanists were the only people to have been faced with this ultimate and fundamental dilemma: to save a collection built to eradicate collective famine, or to us the collection to save themselves.”
Admittedly this book borders on misery porn, but it is also well-written, compelling, and inspirational.
Online Availability
The books mentioned here are all available on the Destination: Book online store at Bookshop.org. You can click on the banner below to take you directly to the Seed books.
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