The Free Seed Project – Seeds for the People
Grow your own healthy, organic food!
With the Free Seed Project, we encourage people to deepen their connection with Earth by providing seeds to community stewards as an alternative to the global, industrial food system.
These seeds are fueling community building, selfless giving and healthy eating.
Participants in The Free Seed Project receive a garden growing kit that 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 Free Seed Project growers through the Free Seed Project Facebook Group
The mission of the Free Seed Project is to increase access to organic gardening and healthy food for as many people as possible. Priority goes to those 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
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 it to our recipients absolutely free, mailing the pack directly to their door.
Our seed packs contain enough seeds to densely plant two 4’x8′ raised beds and can easily 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!
We provide three different types of Free Seed Project packs.
Please read the options available below and request the kit that most fits your needs and goals.
The Free Seed Project and the Power of the Seed Pack by Donation programs are on pause. We do not expect to send seed packs in 2024. You may sign up for waitlists. Please know that it is unlikely we will have seeds available for the 2024 gardening season.
Please feel free to request a pack if you match one of the qualifying characteristics so that we can be of best service to the community. We are a small organization that can not fulfill every request placed. For those with financial resources there is the seed pack by donation option below.
(Seed packs are available for United States addresses only due to the high cost of international shipping and regulations around shipping seeds internationally.)
Visit our FAQ page for more specific information.
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Free Seed Project Pack
Free Seed Project Pack Request Form WAITLIST ONLY
This pack is for individuals. We send enough seeds to start a garden that will fill each person’s life with health and happiness and contribute to regenerating our Earth. That’s quite the garden, all from one envelope in the mail!
With 10,000 packs shipped every season, it is our most commonly requested kit. It helps us put thousands of free seeds in the hands of beginner gardeners, those with low access to seeds/ healthy food, and those growing to share their bounties.
Learn what is in the Free Seed Project Individual pack
Read our Free Seed Project Gardening Guide
The Power of the Seed Pack – by Donation
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 request a pack here- WAITLIST ONLY
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Community Pack
Community Pack Request Form WAITLIST ONLY
Learn about the Community pack here
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, non-profit farms, Free Seed Libraries, and those creating food sovereignty in their community.
Seed Library Pack
This program is on pause.
To stay up to date on when we will offer seed packs in the future and get involved with our current programs, follow us on Facebook and Instagram @Live_Like_Ally, where we will be sharing lots of great content and resources!
You can help increase community access to fresh foods, sustainable alternatives and build resiliency through our other programs. Visit our webpage to find out more about Community Fruit Trees, Community Compost, and Free Seed Library!
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 deserts, urban 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
Like the Live Like Ally Facebook page and follow them on Instagram @Live_Like_Ally Follow the stories of new gardeners, get tips on how to grow food, and be the first to know when we have opportunities for free seeds and fruit trees!
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!
Save your seeds and increase the size of your garden each year without spending any extra money or resources.
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 someone. We are focused on helping beginner gardeners, but if you’re an experienced one, we’d love your help!
Maybe you have a neighbor or friend who’d benefit from growing their 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.
Donate to receive a seed pack (WAITLIST ONLY)
The Free Seed Project is brought to you by Robin Greenfield and the Live Like Ally Foundation.
To learn more about our partnership, click here.