Imagine thousands of the same vegetable or flower linking community gardens, yards and window sills across the City! As One Book, One Chicago is to reading, One Seed Chicago is to urban greening. Each year One Seed Chicago selects one plants to be the focus of a season-long celebration. In conjunction with horticulturalists from GreenNet One Seed Chicago selects three candidate plants. We alternate between voting on a vegetable and a flower. Residents from the Chicagoland area vote on their favorite and we distribute, for free, seeds of the winning plant as part of the season-long celebration. You can grow them in your garden, window box, container garden or a community garden. History/Mission One Seed Chicago is a not-for-profit project of NeighborSpace, Chicago's land trust for community gardens. NeighborSpace works in partnership with three founding governmental agencies the City of Chicago, Chicago Park District, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, as well as other nonprofit organizations and local community groups to preserve and expand community managed open space in Chicago. The goal of One Seed Chicago is to engage current gardeners, nurture new gardeners to green Chicago by growing gardens across the City. The One Seed Chicago project is made possible by the support of our partners, donations from sponsors and the hard work of dedicated volunteers. If your organization would like to become a partner please send an Email to community@oneseedchicago.com. If your business would like to become a sponsor please contact ben@oneseedchicago.com or call 312.863.6292 Previous Seeds 2008: 2008 was the first of what we hope will be many years of growing together. To launch the One Seed Chicago project we handed out sunflower seeds. 2009: Bean. Thanks to a generous donation by Ball Horticultural Company One Seed Chicago was able to distribute 10,000 Blue Lake Pole bean seeds for free around Chicago. The "Year of the Bean" was a great success. If you participated and have pictures of your beans, bean blooms, art or bean structures share them on Flickr or the One Seed Chicago Facebook group. 2010: Voting begins January, 1 2010 and again this year's seed will be decided by your votes. Vote, encourage your friends, coworkers and family to vote and get free seeds. Make sure to subscribe to this blog, follow us on Twitter and sign up for the newsletter to receive updates. Join the One Seed Chicago Facebook group to interact with your fellow gardeners across Chicago |