06/08/2026
A few weeks ago, we challenged you to guess what this unusual decoration is hanging on the wall in Seeds of Diversity's little office . Here's the answer!
✨ Seedy School Projects of a Century Ago ✨
During the early 20th century, up until about the 1950s, it was common throughout Canada and the U.S. for schoolchildren to collect and learn about seeds in biology and agriculture classes.
Sometimes, a class would be assigned to collect seeds from weeds and wildflowers. In rural areas, a collection of agricultural seeds (wheat, rye, flax, oilseeds, etc) might be the assignment. In every case, the students were to find local plants or sources of seeds, collect them in little glass vials, label them with common and/or scientific names, and learn about the plants along the way.
Some of these projects simply displayed the glass seed vials in their original boxes, but others like the one mounted on the wall in our office, involved the creation of a display board. The project could include woodworking, creative design, mathematics, and aspects of many other skills over and above collecting and labelling the seeds.
We don't know how many of these classroom seed collections still exist, but we're sure that they were very common 80-100 years ago.
Learn more: https://seeds.ca/d/?t=d7e2961c00004955
