Warwick Vegetable Gene Bank donates to our #SeedSearch project

We’re delighted to be collaborating with Warwick Vegetable Gene Bank to find and trial traditional and heritage crops.

The Gene Bank is supporting our two-year project ‘Sowing your Seeds: Heritage Crops for a Resilient Future’ – funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which is looking to conserve and pass on precious community vegetable varieties and seed stories in the Midlands.

The bank will provide information and seed samples from its frozen store for 10 crops, to be assessed at our Heritage Seed Library’s trial beds in 2025. These include ex-commercial varieties such as ‘Cheshunt Early Giant’ lettuce, thought to date back to the early 1930s, as well as underutilised crops such as purslane and orach.

Following successful growing trials, which includes sharing our findings with Warwick Vegetable Gene Bank, this vital project will help us develop knowledge of heritage crops, many of which will have been selected and bred locally for their special characteristics and resilience. We plan to maintain and share these varieties as part of our living collection, secured for the future.

We’re incredibly grateful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and for National Lottery players for making this project possible. Find out more about the project here.