Mentor Library helping community grow with seed library

Mentor Public Library is helping seed the community with its new seed library, which launches April 1.

Gardeners—from the greenest sprouts to experienced green thumbs—can borrow heirloom and organic seeds from Mentor Library for free.

Here’s how it works. Anyone with a MPL card in good standing can check out seeds from the library for their own garden. The library’s collection already includes more than 100 varieties of seed, including herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruit.

People can check out as many as 15 types of seed per year.

With the seed library, people check out the seeds from MPL’s collection, grow them into plants, save some of the seed and then, finally, return those seeds from the propagated plant.

Mentor Library is also hosting a series of botanical programs in April to get people thinking green.

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1, at MPL’s Main Branch, the Master Gardeners will give a primer on how to properly wake a garden. They will discuss cleanup, composting, pruning, fertilizing, soil testing, mole problems and impatient gardeners.

Then, at 6:30 p.m. on the same day at the Main Branch, Maria Zampini—the author of Gardenpedia: An A-to-Z Guide to Gardening Terms—will offer fun and helpful tips on how to be a successful gardener. After her talk, she will also sell and sign copies of her book.

Next, at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, the cofounders of the Cleveland Seed Bank—Marilyn McHugh and Chris Kennedy—will talk about seed preservation at MPL’s Main Branch. They will offer their expertise on how to both save and preserve heirloom seeds.

All these talks are free and open to the public. To sign up for them, either call (440) 255-8811 ext. 215 or register on the library’s online event calendar.

Mentor Library is also accepting donations of heirloom and organic seeds for its seed library. If anyone wishes to donate, they can call Senior Services Manager Darlene Workman at (440) 255-8811 or email her at Darlene.workman@mentorpl.org.