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<\/a>I\u00a0first saw\u00a0a flyer about this program\u00a0when I visited Muzeo Museum last fall, but on the first Saturday of February 2026, I had a chance to interview\u00a0Anaheim Heritage Center\u00a0Senior Librarian Nichole Grimes about how the\u00a0seed library\u00a0began and how it benefits the community.<\/p>\nIt is worth noting that the\u00a0librarians within the\u00a0Anaheim Public Library\u2019s Heritage Services oversee the historic Mother Colony House, the\u00a01896\u00a0 Woelke-Stoffel\u00a0House, and the Carriage House at Founders\u2019 Park, located at 400 North West Street.\u00a0The Carriage House\u00a0was added to the Founders\u2019\u00a0Park property in 2011 and it\u00a0is home to\u00a0a museum containing agricultural artifacts from Anaheim\u2019s past. It includes\u00a0lots of displays discussing the many civic improvements made as Anaheim evolved from a tiny wine colony into the city it is today.<\/p>\n
She said, \u201cIn this building, we talk about the different historical folks who have lived in Anaheim and who\u2019ve made it what we recognize it today. We usually start with our Native American tribes: the Tongva is the one from this area. We move forward through our Rancho history and into the founding of the Anaheim colony itself, and then we kind of walk through the development of the city and all of its different phases until we bring it to the present.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Grimes, the park\u2019s library has two main types of seeds: heirloom fruit and vegetable seeds, and California Native seeds. She explained that they represent the plants that were here as well as the plants that folks still grow in their gardens today.<\/p>\n According to Grimes, cucumbers and \u201ca lot of plants that you might think of in a kitchen garden style flourish around this time\u201d in late winter or early spring. I asked her if different seeds are offered seasonally and she explained, \u201cJust this morning, I swapped out one drawer, because I had a large stock of cucumber seeds of all things, but now is the time, so yeah, I\u2019ll swap them out to make the library seasonally appropriate. So, leafy greens and lettuces are doing great.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Inside the Carriage House, next to the east doorway, there is a small cabinet with drawers sitting on a table with a sign marked \u201cFounders\u2019 Park Seed Library\u201d placed above it. Each drawer is decorated with floral wallpaper and has a label by its handle. The seed library sign encourages visitors to open the drawers to see what\u2019s inside. However, before opening any of them, it is recommended that visitors fill out a sign-in sheet, where they can leave their name, date, zip code, and the number of seed packets they will be taking or have already taken.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cThe Seed Library is a program where folks can come in and take up to six seed packets a month at our Open House program here in the Carriage House,\u201d said Grimes. \u201cThe Seed Library started in 2023. We had a card catalog, and I realized that it would be a good opportunity to set this up and get it going. So, it\u2019s been operating about once a month since that time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>A mano y metate, like the ones the Tongva used to grind acorns, was found in a backyard in Anaheim and is now on display in the museum, which also has a steam crusher from when Anaheim was still a wine colony. It\u2019s a horizontal, steam-powered wine press that used wooden planks and a square base to exert pressure on grape skins. A smudge pot from the city\u2019s citrus era also stands in the Carriage House.\u00a0 Close to the doors where the seed library is located, I spotted the first mail delivery wagon in Anaheim, which was built by a man named Frank Eastman around 1900. As a mail carrier, Frank delivered packages along one of three 25-mile routes, and since he was unable to finish the long routes on foot, he built his own horse-drawn carriage, which can still be seen today.<\/p>\n<\/a>She said, \u201cThe seeds come from a wide variety of sources; that\u2019s one of the fun parts about it for me. A lot of seed companies will have a donation program for places like libraries and schools to give them some of the seed packets that they didn\u2019t sell the previous year; they\u2019re still totally viable to grow. But I\u2019ve been really lucky with the community support we have here. Folks will donate seeds that they\u2019ve grown and preserved themselves. We\u2019ve also been really lucky that there have been some institutions throughout the County that are able to help support us. Centennial Farm at the OC Fair has been a big supporter, as well as the Heritage Museum of Orange County in Santa Ana.\u201d<\/p>\n