Last summer, neighbors Laura Saint-Jean and Sally Maayan turned a neglected storage shed surrounded by “ugly bushes” in their Derwood townhouse neighborhood into a vibrant native pollinator garden.
In just one growing season, Saint-Jean said the pair brought the area around the shed to life with donated seeds from friends and neighbors, sprouting a colorful array of flowers and collecting several acres’ worth of seeds. With limited space to plant all of the collected seeds by late fall, the pair donated the surplus to the Rockville Makerspace Seed Library, providing its first batch of non-food seeds.
As the first and only seed library in Montgomery County, the Rockville Makerspace Seed Library at 33F Maryland Ave. joins more than 500 similar programs worldwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The seed library, which operates as a nonprofit under the umbrella of the Rockville Science Center, houses “a totally free collection of seeds available for people to donate seeds they don’t need or take seeds home to use,” according to Evan Keto, manager of Rockville Makerspace.
With a background in plants, forestry and sustainability, Keto was hired in December 2023 to lead Rockville Makerspace, a hub designed to connect the community with technology. The hubis in a separate building in Rockville Town Square across from the nonprofit Rockville Science Center, and it offers an accessible tool library, classes teaching skills such as crocheting and woodworking and advanced equipment including a 3D printer and laser engraver.
In March 2024, Keto, alongside Makerspace volunteer Michele Cohen—who was set to teach a free seed-starting workshop—decided to add a seed library to the Makerspace. Keto envisioned itas a convenient, year-round seed swap for the community.
“There’s a science component. There’s a technology component. There’s a community and sustainability component, so it checks a lot of boxes,” Keto said. “It’s not a far leap from sharing tools to sharing seeds.”
When the seed library launched last spring, it consisted of about five packets of seeds —including those for pumpkin, cantaloupe and cilantro — from Keto’s personal collection and workshop donations that were stored in a small shoebox. Today, it is home to 71 varieties, ranging from fruits and vegetables to wildflowers, herbs, trees and shrubs— with tomato seeds the most popular, according to Keto.
Most of the seed donors and recipients have been Montgomery County residents, but Keto noted there is great diversity in visitors’ gardening experience. He notes that a few dozen people have actively participated in the library since its inception, with many returning often.
“It’s a total mix of people — from really enthusiastic newcomers to gardening to people that have been doing it for a while and know all about the proper way to collect their own seeds from plants they find in the wild,” Keto said.
In mid-January, he said he has seen a recent “uptick in the number of people that have been interested in the seed library.” He attributes the surge to the start of the new year, as community members begin collecting seeds in preparation for their spring planting.
A third space
The impact of the seed library, and the Makerspace as a whole, extends far beyond individual gardens, and is rooted in community-building with initiatives such as biweekly open houses and an active Slack channel.
“A lot of people talk about third spaces—spaces that aren’t your work or home where you can just kind of hang out and engage with people that have similar interests. This is definitely one of those,” Keto said.
This sense of community resonates with visitors such as Montgomery Village resident and researcher Phillip Kostin, 24, who recently discovered the seed library. In late January, he dropped off some squash and pepper seeds and expressed interest in picking up some of Saint-Jean’s seeds.
“I’m mostly on the internet researching [plants] and I don’t get to interact much with the local community, so this was my first time seeing that there’s actually people around me who are really interested in the stuff I’m researching … that kind of blew my mind,” Kostin told Bethesda Today.
Kostin believes the library has the potential to strengthen and unify Montgomery County’s gardening community by fostering the exchange of ideas, information, and stories as well as seeds. He hopes to see increased outside funding, support and passion to help expand the library.
Keto shares a similar vision.
“I’d like to get additional tools and hopefully grow the library…,” he said. “I’d love to have hundreds of [species] and get kind of an encyclopedia of all the different things you would want to try to grow. I want [the Makerspace] to be a hub for DIY-ers where everybody does their own thing but come together to do it.”