Education - Pooling our Resources for the Year's Native Plant Grow-Out
Winter Sowing Season is Coming!
It’s winter sowing season, which means it’s time to order seeds for people in the Northern Hemisphere, where plants need to have a cold treatment period (stratifcation). I’m getting ready for the Wildflower Seed Library mailout, where a nice envelope full of seeds will come in the mail from Ottawa. You can also partake, and use seeds from your own harvest, or even from native plant seed vendors!
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!
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.
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.
Providing free access to native plant seeds
Teaching people about gardening responsibly
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:
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
