Seeds for the People!
Grow your own healthy, organic food!
Since 2018 we have provided seed packs to 40,000 people who face financial barriers to access healthy food and seeds to grow their own food. For the average person to purchase these seed packs of high quality, non-GMO seeds they would typically spend over $80. We provide these seed packs to our recipients absolutely free, mailing the directly to their door.
Our seed packs contain enough seeds to densely plant two 4’x8′ raised beds and can produce over $400 worth of healing greens, hearty veggies, tasty herbs and a mix of pollinator friendly flowers.
We have spent about $80,000 to provide these packs to 40,000 people. If each of the recipients were to purchase these seeds individually, they would have spent over 3 million dollars collectively!
That’s how we’ve turned $80,000 into over 3 million dollars of seed value for our community!
With the modest estimate that each pack can produce $400 worth of food, if everyone grew the seeds we provided, that’s over 16 million dollars of food potential in these packs!
That’s how we’ve turned $80,000 into over 16 million dollars of potential food value for people with low access to healthy food.
This is the Power of the Seed!
Through growing food we are opening the gateway for people to deepen their love for and connection with Earth. We are providing an alternative to the global, industrial food system that causes so much destruction. We also encourage recipients to share the seeds and the food they grow, to build community resilience.
The Grow Your Own Food Seed Pack includes a variety of healing greens, hearty veggies, tasty herbs, and a mix of beautiful and fragrant flowers for our bee, butterfly, and pollinator friends. We also provide:
- Resources for instructions on how to grow a garden
- Resources for seed saving, where you can learn how to turn this pack into more seeds and food year after year by growing and saving your seeds!
- Access to an Online Community with other growers through the Free Seed Project Facebook Group.
Priority for our free seed packs goes to people who:
- have low access to healthy food or would not otherwise be able to afford quality seeds.
- grow food to share with others who have low access to healthy food.
- are first-time gardeners.
- are using the seeds in an educational setting.
After 5 years of providing packs for free through the mail, we are changing our program. While we will still be providing seeds for free to thousands of people, distribution will be done mostly through in person events and through our new Seeds for Schools program.
We are now providing the Grow Your Own Food Seed Pack by mail on a donation basis to support our mission.
The Grow Your Own Food Seed Pack – by Donation
Order a Grow Your Own Food Seed Pack here!
We are elated to share that we have launched a new program of the Free Seed Project to provide seeds to people with financial means to donate for seeds, while helping to fund our giving! We feel so grateful to be able to provide people with the seeds they need to grow their own food, while giving them the gift of giving to others who truly need it!
Learn more about this program and what is in the pack
Read our Free Seed Project Gardening Guide
Free Seed Packs
This year we are offering our free seed packs to school initiatives to grow food! See Seeds for Schools to learn more. We are also providing our free seed packs at in person events.
Sign up for our newsletter to receive email notification for free seeds, Seeds for Schools and Community Fruit Trees, as well as opportunities to support and be involved with our mission.
Seeds for Schools
This year we are offering seeds to children, parents, teachers, school administrators and community members to grow food at their schools!
Learn more about our Seeds for Schools Program here.
Community Pack
This pack is for organizations or individuals growing food on a larger scale, usually for their community. We supply a quantity of seeds fit for community gardens, school gardens, nonprofit farms, seed libraries, and those creating food sovereignty in their community. Learn about the Community pack here.
Order a Community Seed Pack here!
Seed Library Pack is on pause for 2024
Why We’re Doing This
The US American food system is broken. Less than one hundred years ago, we knew where our food was coming from and could recognize what we were putting on our tables.
Today, a handful of mega-corporations control the majority of our food. As a result, we end up eating more and more food-like substances instead of actual food.
The average meal in the USA travels 1,500 miles from farm to fork and has a massive fossil fuel footprint.
Food Apartheid – areas where good-quality food is hard to come by – exist all across the nation.
Nearly fifty million US Americans are food insecure, including tens of millions of children and elders.
Even most organic food at the big supermarkets comes from Big Organic corporations, which use an incredible amount of fossil fuels and adopt lower standards than true organic.
All you need is a handful of seeds, some soil, and water, and you can feed yourself AND your community year after year. As Ron Finley says, “Growing your own food is like printing your own money.”
Help the Free Seed Project and Get Involved
Send us photos! Share your story with before-and-after pictures of the garden you’ve created to growfood@robingreenfield.org.
Share food with your community. Let’s create a culture of sharing our home-grown food with each other. Stand up against the big food corporations by creating a resilient community of people who can produce their food!
Save some seed. If you let one or two of each plant go to seed, then you can turn one seed we supplied you into thousands!
Share your extra seeds with people in your community! Here is our Seed Saving Resource Guide for all the information you need on the topic.
Teach others. We are focused on helping beginner gardeners, but if you’re an experienced gardener, we’d love your help!
Maybe you have a neighbor or friend who’d benefit from growing their own healthy vegetables. Share the seeds with them, and help them get growing! And please subscribe to our Facebook Group to help us answer questions from novice gardeners.
The Free Seed Project has provided seeds for free to over 40,000 people since 2018, with support from Live Like Ally Foundation. Learn more about our partnership here.