Next seed packing dates at Exeter Phoenix!

Sunday January 28, 2-4pm

Sunday Feb 11, 2-4pm

Refreshments provided. take away some seeds for yourself too!

Celebrate the seasonality and diversity of tomatoes which we can grow in our City

Festival will feature a blind taste test; group growing discussion; tasting wheel art activity for children; a tomato-based lunch dish for purchase from our hosts, Daily Bowl; music and face painting.

We will save seeds from the varieties that are successfully grown. Check out our window display at Sidwell Street Bakehouse from 7-10 September during the British Science Festival for how to save tomato seeds and help replenish the Exeter Seed Bank for 2024!

Daily Bowl will also be hosting a chutney making workshop on Saturday 9 September, 5-7pm. See eventbrite details.

• Over 40 residents and groups have been growing tomato varieties this summer

• Over 300 seedlings distributed for free to community centres, Exeter Library and independent businesses

Funding for the Exeter Tomato Festival and tomato seed saving display at Sidwell Street Bakehouse made possible by Exeter Local Food Community Initiatives Fund and the British Science Festival’s Community Fund.

98% of out wildflower meadows are gone. This biodiversity supports our bees and other insect life which pollinate plants and provide food for animals such as birds. We need to work together to bring these plant species back.

This is a meadow pot for the community. Wildflower seed is added to the pot by collecting seeds that have been saved. It is then redistributed to anyone who would like them.

An ongoing participatory community project and pop-up exhibition animating the importance of plants in people’s lives and the connections we have to them in the 21st century.

Over 2022, we are working with 20 local communities groups and individuals who have committed to growing one type of plant in order to harvest its seeds for Exeter Seed Bank. They are the ‘Seed Guardians’ for that local seed.

We with funding from the National Lottery Community Fund Awards for All programme, we are providing workshops and other activities for our Seed Guardians.

This Foundation Seed model is used on a larger scale by the South West Seed Saving Co-op.

We were pleased to be one of the first groups supported by Exeter Northcott’s Get Creative programme. Through this funding, and with the help of 12 friends of the Exeter Seed Bank, we commissioned Exeter-based designer Herman Castaneda to design a cardboard portable kiosk, which we can take to our public engagement events.

If you have never done it before, the very easiest seeds to save are French beans, tomatoes, peas, wildflowers, and lettuce because these almost always self-pollinate; this means you can save seeds from plants you have grown as normal - nothing extra necessary.