Meet Ken Greene: A Book Worm With a Green Thumb…and a Passion for Seed Preservation

Author: Annie Tomlin | Published: January 9, 2018

Have you heard the one about the librarian who loved seeds so much that he opened a seed library?

Nope, that’s not a corny joke—it’s the actual evolution of Ken Greene’s career. In 2004, Greene was a children’s librarian at the public library in Gardiner, New York, when he found himself spending most of his downtime geeking-out over heirloom seeds. “I had just started learning about a lot of the issues around the subject, including how biotech has taken over control of seed sources,” he recalls. The more he discovered, the more dedicated he became to preserving rare plants—and sharing them with his community by adding seeds to the library’s catalog. He thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the library patrons could check out seeds like they do books?”

With that goal in mind, Greene began offering seeds for loan at the Gardiner library. Patrons could choose heirloom and organic seeds to grow at home, and at the end of the season, they saved seeds and returned some to the library. “That’s how libraries work,” he says. “You bring back the story, the information, whatever you took out, to share with the community. In this case, it was seeds.”

Greene’s Business Grows Up

The concept took off in the community and four years later, in 2008, Greene decided to leave the Gardiner library and, with his partner, Doug Muller, start a new business. “We were really passionate about the seed work we were doing, and we thought we could do more if we were doing it full-time together,” he explains. Thus, the Hudson Valley Seed Company (originally called the Hudson Valley Seed Library) was born, and they’ve been a leading purveyor of seeds for organic, heirloom, and open-pollinated plants ever since.

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