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Before jumping in, I’m gonna say what’s really up: my age went and changed decades this week. And before you ask, being thirty just feels the same as before! I feel like I already did all the aging I needed to do before the day arrived.

But the real reason why I’m writing a new entry in your inbox, is because I want to inform you that I’m going through an exercise of reorganizing my projects. I’m thus rebranding my nature journal club, Hemiboreal, and putting this blog and the guide Sharing our Nature inside of it. Click the image to visit the new site, which is slowly transitioning from the old Wildflower Seeds Initiative. All links formerly on that website will redirect there.

The now-defunct (but in good hands!) Wildflower Seeds Initiative

Now some of you who know me might know of the Wildflower Seeds Initiative, an ambitious project I had to help create wildflower seed libraries across Canada.

I was greatly inspired by the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library and wanted to share their model, but realized it takes many hands and a very particular skillset shared by a local community to package and send seeds all across a whole ecoregion.

Now that the Ottawa initiative has evolved and now has become a pan-Canadian mailing initiative with a catalogue and a 10,000 member-count on its Facebook group, I am constantly redefining my own approach in doing seed library-related education and distribution. Not only that, but my current job at Nature NB (which now has the Seed Sitters Club) involves a lot of that native seed education and distribution already, so I don’t want to spread myself too thin.

Back to my roots, I decided to put Sharing our Nature, which I call a nature & community organization guide, inside of the Hemiboreal Nature Guild.

Relaunching my Hemiboreal Nature Journal Club

The Hemiboreal Nature Journal Club was started last year at the original website of hemiboreal.com. I have hosted 3-4 nature journaling workshops since starting it, at local festivals and nature club events. But what I learned was that nature journaling events mostly attracted already-artistically-inclined people, especially those at the intersection between nature and art. This is a very small percentage of the population, but those workshops were very fun to host and taught me a lot!

I think nature is accessible to everybody, but I also think the target audience for nature journaling can be broader. That’s why I wanted to create the Hemiboreal Nature Guild.

I think self-created nature guides through nature journaling doesn’t have to be called “art”. It’s mostly a tool of exploration and curiosity, which leads to learning in a self-directed and cost-free way.

That means anybody who even has a slight interest in nature can use their walks in nature or photos to create their own “guides” and start their learning journey!

Why “Guild”?

To me, “Guild” is the best word for a community of practice linked with nature. It has two definitions: one ecological (a group of different species that use the same resources) and one practical (an association of artisans).

What will change

For those on e-mail, nothing changes in practice (keep up with the great feedback!), but for those on Substack I will be leaving this platform to go fully on the Hemiboreal Guild website. Don’t worry, I’ll transfer my subscriber base there. So be sure to join the mailing list at hemiboreal.com and/or the Discord community for the Club at this link!

See you around these parts very soon!

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As the snows come, comes the time to sow.

At least that’s what it means to me. This unconventional approach to gardening is called winter sowing, which is promoted by the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library. Which I would say, as of now, that they’re the country’s most important library of native plant seeds.

Sowing in early January might be unconventional to a typical gardener, but it’s in fact the easiest way to get plants, provided you have a bit of patience.

As humans, we disperse seeds naturally just by eating fruit since time immemorial. But we can also help nature with the right plants.

With the snows come the release of the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library’s catalogue, an innovative way to browse a large native plant selection adapted to your Canadian province.

I encourage you to support the organization, as they’re getting ready to open their store for the New Year!

Support the OWSL

If you just want to buy seeds outright, a new organization has started this year called the Native Seed Producers of Canada! Browse the members below.

Native Seeds in Canada

My Progress on the Seed Librarian’s Guide

I’ve been working on my Wildflower Seed Library guide a bit, which I’ve started during my visit to Ottawa in late 2024. The sections will come with time, and I’m starting with the Education part. Education on native plants is important, and has to be done all throughout the year.

A large focus of this part is pooling our resources, because we can do so much more as a community. The role of a seed librarian is not only limited to keeping and classifying seeds, but also includes ensuring that the three mandates of a Wildflower Seed Library are fulfilled.

1. Providing free access to native plant seeds

2. Teaching people about gardening responsibly

3. Asking seed recipients to reciprocate the gift of nature

The second point is what I want the Education part to cover in my guide.

Read the new part by clicking here:

Sharing our Nature Guide - Education

Channels and Key Messages

The reason this new section focuses on Channels and Key Messages is that communications make the seed library a concerted effort. That’s what we call “pooling” community resources together in one direction.

By choosing the right channels, we can ensure the message goes through. But with the fragmentation of social media as of 2025, it’s really hard to reach the right people. There’s no problem if several people want to communicate in a parallel way, but it’s also great if they want to pool all their efforts together.

For example, one person could be in charge of an email newsletter. Another person could do radio interviews or other traditional media, and another could be in charge of social media. This all involves slightly different skills, which can be grouped into one single organization comprised of multiple people.

You don’t need to be incorporated to have a website, for example!

And as for what to use for content, the key messages Ottawa WSL used in 2023 are in my guide linked above. It’s easy to do research by using those sentences as a springboard to educate yourself, then others.

By inputting these sentences into a search engine, we can now easily find the sources and further details, which acts as a springboard for further research.

But most importantly, key messages are answers to most questions and / or misconceptions about native plants. Use them as such.

I’m eagerly awaiting my seeds for the winter. and hope you do too! Enjoy the solstice, and don’t forget to get your miles in if you’re able to take a walk outside. Nothing better than a walk in a snow-filled park to get some inspiration for your native plant garden.

Happy Holidays,

Samuel

It’s been a big year for me, and it’s time to rest. I am fortunate enough to take next week off to have a father-son road trip to Montreal in the books, the quite-large metropolis in the Canadian province of Quebec.

That said, I tend to make my off-day trips all about enjoying nature. Because that’s what I like to do, even on vacation.

So why Montreal? I chose the place not only to “escape” the monotony of day-to-day life in small-town New Brunswick (Don’t get me wrong, I love it here but it’s nice to be in a bigger place for a bit), but also to explore nature in the city.

One year ago, my Toronto trip led me to discover that even though I have nothing to envy to these large places, nature-wise (I’m looking at you, dog-strangling vines and invasive phragmites), the movement to rewild urban spaces is picking up steam over there, in Canada’s big cities. That way, people will have access to nature in their own backyard: the most accessible way to enjoy the birds, the bees and the butterflies.

Montreal was named for Mount Royal (Mont-Royal), one of the Monteregian Hills. Without going into complicated geological terms that even I do not understand, those isolated hills made of volcanic rock, are sort-of stepping stones for wild birds, and a special part of Quebec’s agricultural and metropolitan heart: they’re islands of nature in a sea of fields and buildings.

In preparation for my visit, I decided to do some target practice on a local coup-de-cœur: Tantramar’s Quarry Park.

Some people might find videos of plants boring — but this time, a friend showed up! I’ll let you watch it now.

In making this video, I realized that I had a lot to learn, and that many surprises show up along the way.

It’s also hard to get traction, so the only thing I can do is to keep on making them. For now, I like to let nature speak for itself.

The “Worm’s Eye”

We talk a lot about Bird’s Eye View in filmmaking, especially today with drone footage and animated maps. But in truth, I find the Worm’s Eye (the opposite of Bird’s Eye) even more interesting, because it’s close to us landlubbers.

Scientifically, a butterfly or moth larva is a caterpillar. But a “worm” is often a common term for them (silkworm, army worm).

And what worm has an eye? Why, the young Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, of course.

My father is also a nature enthusiast and a videographer, so this lets me have some help along the way to make engaging nature shots. We’ll start with this December trip, and we’ll go further to document nature in all seasons.

I’ve been told that AI might replace videographers. But even before believing that, I know that I’d better have a boring video than a machine “replacing” even one shot of real footage. At least for my creative process.

See you soon with more videos!

Mid-December 2025

I ended up creating a video of the Rapids park in Lasalle, QC!

For this special occasion, I’m excited to share the next chapter in our Wildflower Seed Library journey — a section dedicated to Education through Planning, Planting and Documenting a Seed Garden.

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Whether you’re starting your very first wildflower patch, or founding/supporting a community seed library, this part of the guide is meant for you to read and use.

You’ll find:

• Big questions to ask before planting

• Journaling prompts to help you track growth — in your garden and for yourself

• Reflections on why wildflower seed gardens matter

• Resources for deeper learning and staying inspired

  Read Section 1 - Educating

Read last blog from the Seed Library Chronicle:

How I became a Wildflower Seed Librarian through native plant gardening

My journey is detailed through this blog, which you can get right in your inbox by subscribing.

It all started when I was very young; we had let our cat loose in the woods, and the birds slowly went away. That’s when I realized nothing was permanent, and that our influence on the landscape—whether through us or even our pets—is strong.

When I graduated university, I became a Butterflyway Ranger to heal my ecological grief. That’s when I started a pollinator patch in my campus and my collective garden, with other Rangers and local environmental organizations.

And finally, this year, I am following a Nature Journaling Educator’s Certificate, with Wild Wonder Foundation. Here is a bit on my artistic journey through the spring.

As solstice is upon us, the pace of life changes. As well as thinking about all of our outdoor projects, we must think of resting.

Enjoy this season and take some time for yourself!

-Sam

This article was first published in Projet Amelanchier (amelan.ca), my first blog, in 2023.

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A dream come true

My parents wanted to buy land in the country, after selling their suburban home. For me, the reduced access to city amenities was more than compensated by access to cedars, a creek, marshes, maples and a few tall pines in the backyard. Ah, the days when buying a lot wasn't out of the question!

In these forests, three generations of kitties have accompanied me everywhere. I was an only child, so company was appreciated. Even though I frequently received tiny corpses as gifts, it took me several years to realize that the felines I loved so much were cleaning the woods of birdsong, but that's a story for another time.

The house itself was a fixer-upper, so during the renovations I used to go to the lake on the islands a few hundred yards behind. So many memories!

The lake with many names

The lake was about forty metres long and roughly round-shaped.

Let's also call it the beaver pond, because there were beavers. But when most Kent County lots are divided into rows a few acres thick, these saw-toothed mammals can quickly create a dam that floods the entire width. Not very popular with humans, who want access to the forest behind! But we love beavers here, so we'll keep quiet about their ultimate fate.

What mattered, or mattered to me, were the islands in the pond. To me, they were a world unto themselves. I placed scrap wood planks on them to get from one island to the next. Here's a map from my own memory showing these islands circa 2006.

The individual islands had many names over the years, but Birch Island (2) was by far the coolest. White birch trees covered this islet, and I had thinned out a circle (with my father's help) in the middle so I could set up my fortress, never built though.

We even skated a few winters on the lake, and the next island (3) was a place where we could sit down for a snack break.

The animals I knew by name

I didn't know the names of the plants back then, but I loved imagining the lives of the animals in the woods behind our house.

We saw moose in our yard. Hares were frequent visitors. My parents even heard some kind of lynx one night. And were there any bears? I think there were. On the other hand, I was scared to death of owls at night.

I've always had a fascination with animals, mammals in particular, but also crawling insects and frogs. But my passion for birds and pollinators came much later.

Reflections of a twenty-something

Since then, we've sold the house and moved back to the city. It was only later that I realized that those islands were nothing more than mounds of dirt left there by the previous owner's machinery, which had dug the pond. In my twenties, we revisited the house and I quickly realized that everything looked much bigger back then than it does, from my perspective as a grown-up man today.

But I also realize that what fascinated me most were the lifeforms that made up the forest in which I grew up. The beavers, the chickens in their coop, the cedars in the cedar grove, the maple trees we sometimes tapped with a hand-drill - these were all part of my childhood imagination that led to who I am today.

Don't hesitate to tell your child to go outside and play, while checking daily for ticks. Perhaps the plant you choose to incorporate into your yard, if you choose the right one, will attract beneficial insects and birds that you can observe together. Who knows? To help you decide, trees that are essential for wildlife, such as native birches, oaks, willows and maples, attract the most insect species, real nature machines that will in turn feed the birds whose babies need caterpillars to grow.

Ah, and for us cat lovers, some of our rarest birds nest on the ground, constituting easy prey for domestic felines. Sorry, Granola, but your life has been too good, at the expense of young warblers. I'd say the number one option would have been the good old leash if it absolutely must go outside.

• This bird, considered vulnerable by the Canadian government (Species at Risk Act), winters in South America but comes up to Canada to breed in summer. Its nesting season is from early June to mid-August, and it nests on the ground, making it vulnerable to all kinds of predators. Its population in Canada has declined by around 80% since the 1980s.

And if you live in the city, create a garden of native and edible plants. What better way to commune with nature than to create a part of it yourself! Your children will thank you.

Here are a few ways you can get involved!

Native plant resources

• Useful links

• Winter sowing instructions

Become a Butterflyway Ranger

Participate in a Wildflower Seed Library

It was a cold, but sunny mid-November day when I arrived in Orleans, a neighborhood in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, to meet Mélanie Ouellette. The founder of the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library (OWSL) greeted me warmly at the community’s hockey arena, where a seed distribution event had just ended in one of the rooms on the second floor.

I had arrived late at the event, because of train delays. But it was no problem, as she and the volunteers of the library had delayed cleanup just so I could see how they set up the room. How generous of them, I thought.

This room was the setting for a seed distribution event just minutes ago, one of Mélanie’s inventions. Since 2020, when she started from modest beginnings, she went from one table to ten. She went from people’s driveways to parks, to rented rooms in community centers and arenas.

The aforementioned tables all have a purpose. If you look at each one of them, outlined in the article I wrote in the past about this model, they’re not only to display and distribute seeds, but also to receive donations, be they monetary or botanical in nature.

Yes, the way of this seed library is reciprocity. Just like Robin Wall Kimmerer outlined in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, and later in The Serviceberry, which came out at the same time as my trip. It’s all because the OWSL is founded on values held in common by the people of this land. As Kimmerer mentioned in that last book, the Haudenosaunee are holding sacred for centuries the first known sustainability policy, the Dish with One Spoon. And by Mélanie’s own sayings, it was Kimmerer herself who inspired the creation of the OWSL.

I was there to learn more about how to establish one of my own, in the province of New Brunswick. I also had received funding from Nature Canada, who paid for the trip. The overarching goal is to create a guide in 2025-2026 on how to establish a native plant seed library.

But what I want to highlight more than anything, is not only the potential for transformative education resulting from those initiatives, but the already-existing numbers of people educated on better gardening practices.

Here are the current numbers as of spring 2025, from the homepage of the seed library (wildflowerseedlibrary.ca) :

Since 2020, over 8,000 community projects, schools and individuals received free native seeds in Ottawa, the Ottawa valley and in five other provinces. Of these recipients were at least a dozen city schools where students were able to participate in hands-on gardening with native plants. In addition to seeds, more than 1,700 community projects, schools and individuals have received free native plants in the last two years. The Seed Library disseminates accessible scientific information related to good ecological practices and tools on harvesting native seeds, through an impressive social media presence and through presentations throughout our city. Since 2023, 10,600 individuals have received information on the importance of native plants in ecosystems.

To say the least, through its workshops, seed-packing events, and collaborative learning model, OWSL nurtures a deeper understanding of ecological sustainability, as it equips people with the seeds they need to make a tangible impact. The model encourages a shift in mindset, where gardening is now about supporting pollinators, restoring habitats, and contributing to the fight against climate change. In this way, Ottawa stands as a model for how small, community-driven initiatives can spark meaningful transformation. The OWSL proves that education is most powerful when it’s action-oriented. By sowing the seeds—both figuratively and literally—of ecological restoration and knowledge, this new model based on not-so-new ideas is cultivating a better future for all of us.

I was also able to distribute to my community coming back, thanks to Ottawa’s generous seed donations. Which, I hope, is going to help me kickstart my own. You can follow my progress on my Substack here.

I’m thus going to leave you with a question, which you can answer below if you want:

How can learning through ecological restoration shape the way we live, teach, and relate to others?

This blog was first published through Bee Friendly Gardening’s newsletter.

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As April settles in, I have been fooled more than once on the arrival of “True spring”, whatever that is. For some, it’s the crocus, for others, the coltsfoot. For me, it’s definitely the willows, and red maples. I’m biased towards native plants, yeah. But the bees are too.

Snow has tried to make a comeback at least three times since our “False spring”, almost a month ago. March 17 was especially warm here, with temperatures oscillating from above 10°C, and never going below zero. Then, the end of the month was cold, with some days barely above a maximum of zero.

As the maple sugar season ends and the willows bear their cat-toes, my winter-sown seeds still await germination time. The bees are sleeping under the leaves, but not for long.

I never know what to think of our “fifth season”. It always feels like a let-down because we expect winter to finish sooner, doesn’t it?

At the same time, we relish the time spent at the sugar camp, licking the taffy from a stick. The slow signs of spring surely popping up, one at a time.

Is this spring the true one? Is it not?

Why are we wedded to four seasons anyway?

All these questions are so mundane for many people, and at risk of sounding cliché, with the constant gloom, we forget the blooms.

Breaking away from the onslaught of “content”

It’s been a hard fifth season for some of us. I’ve been wanting to do a digital detox for a while now, without success.

It doesn’t help that changes are occurring at a fast pace, everywhere. The Internet is becoming a performative beast to feed with our attention and content, and as a creator, I struggle to define as a “content creator”, a thought that I’ve found echoed across many of the very people who now bear that dubious title.

Because content is just that, content. To fill a file slot in an image-and-video-driven set of platforms. To create for views and reactions. To ask a thinking machine to come up with an image from a vague sentence, giving a chimera-image with some bits that don’t make sense. Like the Chimera of the Greeks, mythical monster made up of various bits of real-life animals. Seems easy, right? Until you realize it’s all kind of soulless.

Published art is associated to content. But unpublished art isn’t.

That’s why nature journaling has become a refuge for me, at least in my head. But in reality, I really need to make the time. It’s become a goal of mine for this warm season.

A binding, a club and some cards

I’ve done many things to keep myself from mechanically rubbing LED screens with my thumb.

I’ve bound my first sketchbook, for example. From a set of 8.5x11 pages cut into booklets, sandwiched between maple taffy cone cardboard pieces.

The coptic bind method (Google it, it’s old as sin) has given me great results, albeit my crafting hand isn’t the neatest. I’ve been trying to break free from my own perfectionism, making friends with my inner critic, and feel this is part of it. This binding allows my sketchbook to lay flat. Along with the Accordion fold method, these two can be combined with greater-than-expected results (This series of videos and website helped me a lot to think differently of paper notes).

I’ve also founded my first club, the Hemiboreal Nature Journal Club. That way, I’ll have a reason to go outside and document nature. More on that later.

I’ll leave you with the artist trading cards I started making. These are not overwhelming to do and can take 10-15 minutes on average for me. They’re a great way to replace the scrolling.

That said, I hope you’re doing well in this beginning of spring, and that you’re not taking things too seriously. Remember to have fun and enjoy the season that’s slowly manifesting itself!

Here’s what we all could do to share our nature, and restore biodiversity to our cultivated places!

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And here is a diagram of the guide I am developing in partnership with the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library.

I was in Ottawa when I chose seeds to bring home, all native to my region : the Canadian Maritimes.

Read more about the trip and how to start a seed library in this article.

This is the winter that mail was paralyzed throughout the country, due to a carriers’ strike. FedEx was still going though, even though the cost per package wasn’t worth sending anything less than bulk amounts of seeds.

Eventually, the Post Canada strike subsided and people were able to order from Ottawa. Meanwhile, I had hundreds of packets to give away. So what to do?

I couldn’t count all the people I have given packets to (something I recommend doing), but I got to distribute seeds to around a hundred people or more since December.

I noticed lots of enthusiasm among the population, as much of my outreach was done by piggybacking on existing events.

Seeds, seeds! : the source of a passion

I was fully enthralled by seeds when I realized the whole ecological restoration movement depended on them.

And first, as many people would, I had already started saving heritage vegetable seeds. Until I discovered Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), the native host of the Monarch Butterfly.

That plant, as it did for many others, ignited the spark that eventually gave way to my involvement as a Butterflyway Ranger.

Having been given plants by my local watershed organization, I created a pollinator garden at my collective garden, and at a middle school. Even though it was only Milkweed, it created habitat. That’s when I saw my first caterpillar.

Seeing the seed-pods come up, it awakened, in my head, a certain realization : native plants are much easier to save seeds from than vegetables.

It quickly dawned on me that people could be great seed-spreaders, as much as wind is for the milkweed. Maybe even better in some regards, and more efficient judging by the quantity of plants we produce with so little seed. Could that compensate for all the damage we’re doing?

Organizations like Nature NB were already sending out Milkweed packets. With so few local distributors of local species, what we were lacking in my head was a reflection of the true biodiversity we see around us.

That’s when I found out about Wildflower Seed Libraries.

More than Milkweed — Sharing our nature by distributing biodiversity

The guide I am currently writing will talk about ways to collect, receive and pack, but you might be able to receive seeds to distribute from another established Wildflower Seed Library, to boot your own.

But regardless, what to do with all these packets?

The goal of distribution is to, ideally, expend them all! This model does not warrant hoarding seeds for next year, so you’d keep them only a few months until they go out in the public.

There are several means to do this seed dispersal, but the best is through a distribution event. There are ways to piggyback onto other places’ events—with permission, of course.

Here’s a list of some I can think of :

• Farmers markets

• Seedy Saturdays

  • For this one, the earlier the better — most are in March but some go to January. Nothing prevents you from holding one in December!

• Christmas/Holiday markets

• Naturalist clubs

• Winter carnivals

• Hold your own event, like the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library does!

  • An article is coming up on how to do this.

The educational component

Along the way, I’ve noticed that people don’t realize they can do it all outside, in the winter.

That’s probably one of the biggest myths to crack—stratification is necessary for lots of native plants, and by nature, all of them thrive with it. Our native plants have a natural propension to cold.

Learn how to winter sow

To me, this kind of public outreach is like climbing a mountain path : you can either see it as a chore that never ends, or as a fun hike that will get you to meet people and discover new things. I prefer the latter.

I’m sure you’ll notice some more common gaps in knowledge along the way, too. I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments.

We all have a part to play in teaching—environmental education shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of scientists only. That’s why in my guide, education & outreach is something to be done in all seasons.

Read the Native Plant Blog of this site, which will soon have more information on native plant education.

Native Plant Blog Section

But I don’t want to start a seed library. How can I help regardless?

There are many ways to help, without necessarily being the initiator of a native plant project like a seed library.

• Let people know about native plants, that’s a first step. If you stumble upon a species and you’re not sure (for Canada), check VASCAN.

• If you have a yard, add native plants to it. Try one plant at a time if you’re overwhelmed. Here are some resources on how to do this.

  

• Be a citizen scientist! Use iNaturalist and other means to contribute to science while having fun in your yard.

• Be curious. Keep a nature journal.

• Volunteer in your nature club to plant pollinator gardens, in your local watershed group’s rain garden projects, in your community garden, or in the garden of someone you particularly enjoy!

With that, I think I’ve said enough for this first instalment of a seed distribution series. Have a great time sharing our nature!

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Native plants really are where it’s at in terms of insect conservation, yet they can do so much more than just provide a source of food for all the wildlife we know so well! In fact, you can do something about it by becoming a Ranger yourself. If you’re wanting to get in on the action, applications have opened yesterday, and close on Feb. 19.

Act one — Help the bees… but how?

One thing really led to another after last pandemic. I’ve been a native plant seed-head (pardon the pun) since.

I was stranded inside when I realized it was Spring 2021, and that the bees needed our help. When I heard of the No Mow May movement as started in the U.K., I thought it was a logical step : let’s grow flowers for the bees!

I did the right thing at first — I downloaded iNaturalist for the first time and honed in on all the species I could get my eyes on. I saw lots of miner bees in the neighbourhood, that thrived on bare patches of ground. I also saw violets (Viola sororia), which I read was an important native host plant for the Fritillary butterfly. It was the start of a journey.

So I started giving out printed signs, without much thought, to my neighbours.

All throughout April and May of that year, I did local campaigns for watershed organizations, I spoke on the radio, made the front page of the local paper, and many people responded with a resounding… lack of mowing!

I did not know what a native plant was then. I used the comfrey — Symphytum sp. — as an example (as seen on the sign — a non-native plant hard to eradicate), because as a gardener, it was what I knew attracted the bumblebees.

Until a friend presented me to his friend, who knew a lot about native plants — then thanks to my new friend, I landed a student job at Pollinator Partnership Canada and got to work on an animated video. I gotta say, I was hooked.

With my animation & motion design courses under the belt, and all this knowledge around me, I did the logical thing to do. Here’s the result of that summer, thanks to an amazing team of colleagues.

After a year-long freelance stint in motion design; a few jobs in local environmental organizations; lots of Doug Tallamy reads; an online symposium about seeds; 2023 came knocking.

By that time, I was back at it : native plants were my calling. I felt like the time was ripe to apply to the Butterflyway Project.

Act two — Nature inquiry and joining the Butterflyway

We just talked how I quickly realized that “helping the bees” was a bit more elbow grease than doing “nothing”; not mowing can only get you so far. Time to step it up a little!

Luckily, the Butterflyway project exists for the purpose of building pollinator gardens. 1,800 Rangers have been trained so far to do this:

• More than 116,500 native wildflowers and grasses planted

• Approximately 3,150 trees and shrubs planted

• 7,400 habitat gardens established

• 139 Butterflyways established (a Butterflyway [means creating] 12 or more habitat gardens in close proximity)

  (DSF, 2025)

Indeed, building a Butterflyway can be quite the endeavour. This was the goal I agreed on while signing up : all of 12 gardens? After three years, I definitely haven’t used up all my Butterflyway Project signs, and I ought to!

At the same time, I discovered Wild Wonder Foundation and nature journaling.

These two things really opened the respective cans of worms, namely, of activism and introspection. That’s what I mean by deeply personal : nature’s like that for me.

Then, there’s the social. 1,800 Butterflyway Rangers? That’s a lot of new friends!

We have our fair share of friends in New Brunswick; we’ve been having tea and cookies with some local Rangers for a while, and it’s always fun. We chat over discussing what the next addition to the pollinator garden’s gonna be, and sometimes talk about plants and politics.

Speaking of things political, tides were changing in my local community. The No Mow May buzz made waves, so much so that two years later the old 20-centimeter bylaws on lawn growth were starting to be obsolete. That’s when my hometown — Dieppe — became one of the first municipalities to make way for flowers and eliminate unenforceable language that is so commonplace in municipal bylaws.

It’s impossible to know how much of an impact I had on that decision, but now living right in the neighboring town, I feel like I played a part.

Act three — A trip to Ontario

I’ll be honest — after I started working at Nature NB in late 2023, things blurred a bit for me in terms of the 12 habitat gardens I set out to plant as a volunteer ranger. Nature NB is the organization that distributes Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), the native host plant for the Monarch Butterfly, across the province. That way, I feel like my work contributes to many more gardens than I can ever fathom.

That’s how I feel like activism in the Butterflyway goes way beyond just planting flowers by yourself — it makes way for meaningful change.

After discovering about the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library, I set out to do my own Seed Library in Moncton to get the most native plants out in people’s yards. Then came this new project called Sharing our Nature, that you’re reading right now.

Thanks to the funding I received from Nature Canada, I met so many new friends out in Ontario thanks to this work, I can’t even recall how many three-hour conversations I had on plants!

That’s my story with the Butterflyway project — one not only of hope, but of a very supportive community. I feel like everywhere I go, I can find people I hold common ground with.

I’ll end on that note: many adventures await for those who put in the hours, and I find it’s all worth it at the end!

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Last November, I took the train to Ottawa, starting from my Eastern hometown of Moncton, for a very particular reason : I think native plant seed libraries can truly take off in this day and age.

Funding from Nature Canada paid for this trip, so I could elaborate a guide on how to participate, manage or start a Wildflower Seed Library like in Ottawa, where a strong and well-oiled initiative makes waves.

See last year's Young Nature Leaders

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As soon as I arrived, I was welcomed with open arms. The founder of the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library, Melanie Ouellette, moved from my neck of the woods (New Brunswick) to the capital of Canada and created something quite remarkable there.

From her own house, she commands a whole operation of native plant seed distribution, in the form of cute little envelopes made by volunteers from recycled paper.

What you might see from the outside is just the tip of the iceberg; I got to live the busy season of the seed library from the inside.

Thanks to regular meetings that week, I was able to see how a seed library truly operates. Maybe then, we can spread that model throughout the world to restore our managed landscapes into healthy ecosystems.

Let’s start with the principles of Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library.

1. Provide free access to native plant seeds

2. Teach people about gardening responsibly

3. Ask seed recipients to reciprocate the gift of nature

The question I ask myself is: how can we make this all happen in the simplest way possible?

Act zero : The online presence

This seems like a step that might or might not permeate every other that’s about to come. Nowadays, you kind of need an online presence in many communities, but who am I to say? Maybe your community is so tightly-knit that you don’t need to be on Facebook? Although I doubt it, it might be possible.

In Ottawa, there is a super-active Facebook group of more than 8,000 people (as of January 2025) that you can join, no matter where you come from. All kinds of informations are shared. It allows people to connect, and the posts serve as reminders of what there is to be done.

If you’d rather work by email, that is up to you. But I can’t guarantee it will work as well, since as of early 2025, Meta is still where people are at in terms of building a community around those subjects. That could change in the near future.

Act one : Accept donations of seeds

Contrary to popular belief, one need not hundreds of donations to begin. One donation of a single or a few species is enough, and can feed many envelopes for a first season.

In theory, you could have a seed library of only Boneset, or solely Blue Flag Iris, and it would still make a positive impact.

In practice, the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library goes above and beyond that. They might have two hundred species, but no more than fifty-ish donors.

These donors, when one wants to be a purist and start from the wild, should harvest on their land or have permission from the owner; we don’t want to break any laws here. They should also research and know the target species very well. Misidentification can lower credibility.

After we know the location, we might flag it in some way, and when the time is ripe we need the seeds to be ready.

1. The seeds must follow the Honourable Harvest. No taking the first nor the last you come across, and many recommend that no more than 10 % of what’s there should be taken. A recommended read is The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024).

2. The seeds must be straight species. Distributing cultivars goes against the principles of the Wildflower Seed Library.

3. The seeds must be harvested at the right time. Any other time means the seeds might not germinate correctly.

Once we have our bag of seed-heads or seeds, we must label them correctly, with the date, exact species and location. Then they’re ready to be donated.

In the Ottawa context, donations are accepted not only at the door of the building operating as the library (In this case, Melanie’s house) but also at the same time as distribution events. These wondrous, multipurpose, ultra-efficient meetings are held all around the community. But for ourselves, we can’t hold those yet, as we don’t have packed seeds to give out.

Act two : Pack them in some way

The second step seems quite simple. We pack our donations and label them.

But making seed envelopes takes time. Packing and labeling them also does. When we want to do this without spending our whole life on distributing free stuff, that’s where volunteers come in.

Now you’d be tempted to scream “free labor!!”, but you’d be surprised at how many people want to do meaningful work.

This meaningful work, however menial, can be done in front of the TV or while listening to an audiobook, yet is instrumental in making sure a seed library operates.

It includes :

• Cutting squares of recycled paper and folding small seed envelopes. This can be done easily by literally anyone, yet the product can be stored quite easily.

  Watch envelope-folding tutorial

• Packing cleaned donations directly from large amounts of uncleaned seed. We need to clean (thresh) the seed from the chaff (non-seed material) and transfer the cleaned seed to medium-sized envelopes. This should be done by the person who has access to where the donated seeds are stored at first.

  • This one has no video, but it involves cleaning the seedheads and packing a few hours’ worth of seed-packing material into large envelopes.

    

  • This is to ensure the person packing the seeds at the other end doesn’t get too much work assigned to them. A too large amount of seeds could easily represent too many hours’ work.

• Packing small amounts of seeds from medium envelopes into small seed envelopes, and labeling them. This is the most time-consuming and timely step, as it has to be done for a lot of cumulative time to get a sizeable amount of envelopes.

  Watch how to pack seeds

  • For this one, we need printed directions to grow each plant printed on a standard sheet of paper, which will be taped to shut the envelope.

  • The quantities of seed are generally 40-50 per envelope. This is determined by a set of spoons, which are used in Ottawa to account for different seed sizes in a uniform way.

Now we have our seeds, we just need containers for envelopes. Ottawa uses plastic trays from ULINE.

Act three : Do events

Distribution events, at their simplest, can be really efficient.

They serve as :

• A place for people to get seed envelopes

• A place for people to get seeds to pack

• A place for people to give the envelopes they packed

• A place for people to meet and talk about native plant gardening and planting

• A place to accept donations and sell merchandise.

• A way to recruit and keep volunteers

In Ottawa, it takes the form of a room, rented for the afternoon, where tables are garnished with containers full of seed envelopes. There is a table for each of these purposes:

Distribution event tables

1. Welcome table

2. Donations and merch (cashbox) table

3. Seed trade table

4. Shade plants

5. Wet Part-shade plants

6. Dry Part-shade plants

7. Sun plants

8. Trees and shrubs

9. Winter sowing teaching table

10. Ask-Me-Anything table

You however don’t need events with ten tables to get started. The founder Melanie started doing this parks and people’s driveways by herself.

My own adventures in starting a seed library

I have already dipped my toe and started a Facebook group, and received seeds from Ottawa this year. I thank them for that, but just the distribution is already something big for one person. I’ve got donations, but did not have the time to pack them into those singular recycled envelopes.

To distribute what Ottawa sent me, I used already-existing events and opportunities: seed swaps, farmers markets, but also created my own event called “New Year, New Roots”.

All that to say, finding committed volunteers is not easy. I wholeheartedly commend Melanie for the work she has done in finding a core group of dedicated people running a system like that so smoothly. She even set up mailing and posts across Canada after opening an online shop for two weeks.

After coming back from my trip there, I have to say I was a bit overwhelmed, but encouraged in how simple and necessary this whole process is.

Next steps

We just talked about a basic model for a seed library, but there can be more to it.

Armed with this information, one may now find people who want to create new processes, to go on top of the basic seed library we talked about in this article.

Going with everyone’s strengths is an essential step, as we should take on what we’re best at in this kind of endeavour. For example, I love communications, so here I am communicating about it. Just don’t do everything all at once. Find allies. Talk to them about their passion and incorporate it into your library!

Here are some ideas to pitch to new volunteers:

• A mailing system?

• A database of all the plants?

• A blog, podcast or newsletter?

• A program to teach children native plants at school?

• A heatmap of all the places the seeds went to?

• An ecoregional description of the ecological area(s) covered by the seed library?

• Etc.

You get the picture.

Now as you’ve probably noticed, this can be a real rabbit-hole and can take a whole life to make come to fruition. But if you have the time, the bandwidth and the motivation, go and try things!

If you’re yet unsure about how or why to do all this, be on the lookout for Sharing our Nature, a guide on Wildflower Seed Libraries, by subscribing below.