“The Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) re-imagines the
conventional seed bank for a new epoch defined by massive human impact on the
global environment. Rather than focusing exclusively on human utility or
agricultural heritage, we champion the contributions of weedy plant species
most likely to survive and thrive in an unpredictable future.
Stocked with seeds gathered from the vacant lots, street
verges, superfund sites and abandoned infrastructure, the seed library provides
a gene pool of tough, highly adaptable plants well-suited to live in close quarters
with humans and their attendant landscape transformations.
Offering services like soil stabilization, moisture
retention, heat island reversal, toxic bio-accumulation and medicinal and
nutritional attributes, these plants are the ideal pioneer species, prepared to
heal the wounds inflicted by a changing climate unsustainable resource
extraction. Spontaneous urban plant communities will form the base of new,
novel ecosystems as we move through the bottleneck of the sixth mass
extinction. Dedicated to overcoming plant-blindness in contemporary urban life,
NESL believes that reciprocal networks of plants and people can provide a solid
foundation for building ecologically just communities.”
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