Through growing, preserving, propagating and sharing rare heritage seeds and fruit trees Irish Seed Savers is Ireland’s main conservation NGO nurturing Ireland’s food biodiversity and sustainability.
Our objective is to preserve Ireland’s rich food crop heritage by conserving rare varieties of vegetables, grains and heritage apple trees, suitable for our climate and soil.
We connect with communities throughout Ireland to encourage and share our skills to provide awareness, education and on-site opportunities to teach the importance of self-sufficiency, seed sovereignty programme and protecting our environment
This knowledge and seed base means that Ireland continues to have some control over its future food security in times of continuing industrialisation of food and diminishing resources worldwide.
At our working farm in Scariff, County Clare, we have 20 acres of organic seed gardens, heritage orchard trails and woodlands that are open to the public, giving accessibility to the richness in our biodiversity and ecology.
To date, we have saved and researched over 600 varieties of organic, open pollinated heritage seeds – some even from extinction, which are housed in our purpose built living seed bank. Our extensive orchards hold the national apple tree collection with over 170 varieties as well as the countries only public Self-Rooting Orchard. We carry out extensive conservation research to protect our food heritage and to give insight into ever changing growing conditions in Ireland.
We share our skills and knowledge on seed saving, gardening and other sustainable living skills through workshops, courses, camps, schools, outreach programmes and events.
