Lampeter Permaculture Group (LPG) is starting a local seed library, Banc Hadau Llambed, with the aim of fostering local food resilience by encouraging more local people to save good quality seeds of veg that grow well in local conditions. Through doing this we hope more people will learn about and feel confident to grow and even share their own veg. In this, we are being supported by the local Transition group and Transition Development Trust, who are hosting the seed library, and the seed library has the potential to link in with other local initiatives.

As part of our preparations we ran a free beginners’ seed saving workshop in early September that was attended by 14 people and spawned a request for a repeat workshop for people who couldn’t attend, which takes place at the end of October. To prepare ourselves we met Sue Stickland in Newtown for an informative day workshop: although we all had varying degrees of experience in saving our own seed, we felt it important to start with a fuller understanding of successful techniques, and we learnt an enormous amount from Sue (author of the excellent Back Garden Seed Saving).

Although none of us are fluent Welsh speakers we aim to make Banc Hadau Llambed a bilingual service for all the local community. It was launched at the LPG Community Apple Day, and will be open for deposits and withdrawals during the twice-monthly Saturday People’s Market. We hope this will be an opportunity for many conversations about food growing, seed saving and permaculture. Watch this space…. Anyone interested or doing something similar can get in touch on [email protected] .