True Harvest Seeds

We are an environmental charity set up five years ago to address the lack of a seed bank for wild species in our country. We envisage a National Seed Bank containing all varieties of seeds from wild, both common and rare, industrial and commercial seed to crop wild relatives. We make wild seed collections with the help of volunteers from all over the country and have a processing lab in Strangford, where the seeds are finally placed into deep cold storage - a gene bank. The seeds are preserved for several reasons, some for the preservation of the species, some for research but most are available to suitable restoration projects throughout the environmental sector in relation to local provenance, just for the cost of replacing the collections. We have developed a Seed Saving Kit to enable schools and community groups to easily save their own seed for successful sowing next year. We are currently setting up a processing unit for the production beds to grow out small collections and endangered species ex-situ to bulk up seed collections for the gene bank.It is intended that this site be open to receiving volunteers for the purposes of education, research and community engagement, it would be wonderful to have regular volunteers attend and enjoy the activities concerning plant growing, raising to seed, collecting, cleaning, drying, storing and cataloguing, as well as administrative tasks. We are seeking funding to make this site suitable for receiving volunteers. Finally, we are becoming increasingly involved in big fundraising thoughts and actions for the raising of a National Seed Bank for the island of Ireland.