One day, in 1972, Kathleen Plunkett-Black was walking past a neighboring garden in western Wisconsin whose owners had moved away. A vegetable patch was left unattended and had turned into a wasteland. Dried bean pods were hanging from the plants there, unnoticed and ready to be discarded. Instead of leaving them there, Kathleen decided not to miss the opportunity and picked the beans and planted them in her own garden. Initially, it seemed very logical not to discard seeds that could have been used for planting. Luckily, this tiny action gradually turned into a campaign for the preservation of heirloom varieties of vegetables.
Many years later, she registered more than 150 varieties with Seed Savers Exchange, helping keep rare vegetables from being forgotten. She has donated 10 varieties of seeds to the Heritage Farm seed bank and continues to share seeds and knowledge with other gardeners, as recorded in the Seed Savers Exchange stewardship story.
An interest that became a lifelong project
Kathleen’s interest in gardening began long before she found those abandoned beans. She grew up in Vermont, learning to garden with her father, who encouraged kids to maintain their own plots. This experience gave her a lasting love of gardening.
In 1972, Kathleen and Bryce chose a different way of life. After spending much time together at university, they moved to rural western Wisconsin for self-sufficiency. Their farm gradually supplied almost all of the fruits and vegetables they needed, and gardening became part of everyday life rather than simply a hobby. They saved seeds of each and every crop, which ensured that there would be crops to plant the following year again.
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Those abandoned bean pods made Kathleen realize that rare varieties might be lost if nobody cultivates them again. That experience changed the way she thought about every seed she planted.
More than just beansKathleen’s interest in Seed Savers Exchange began after she read about the organization. She was intrigued by the organization and attended one of its summer meetings with her children. There, she watched seed saver Glenn Drowns demonstrate hand pollination of squash. Up until that time, she thought that saving seeds from some vegetables was a complicated process. After the step-by-step demonstration, she was convinced that anybody with basic gardening skills should be able to do it too.
Soon, she began saving seeds from summer and winter squash and then moved on to other vegetables. Each gardening season brought her another lesson, another variety, and another opportunity to preserve vegetables that were becoming increasingly difficult to find.
Seed-saving of Okra (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Preservation is more important than productivity
Kathleen’s collection built up slowly, with different varieties being added over time. She became adept at saving seeds from crops like beans, peppers, squash, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, barley, cowpeas, ground cherries, and others. Some varieties stayed in her garden because they performed well; others remained because so few people were still growing them.
One example of the latter is the historic Early Russian Black Spine cucumber. Kathleen has said it is not necessarily the best-performing cucumber in her garden, but she continued growing it after realizing that she was the only person still listing it through the Exchange. For her, the preservation of a certain variety is always more important than its mere productivity.
That same commitment shaped many of the vegetables she grew year after year. Several varieties, like Arikara Yellow beans, Kuroda Chantenay carrots, and Foster flax, that remain part of the collection today, were back then rare and were found almost 4 decades ago.
Sharing seeds by sharing knowledge
As Kathleen gained experience, she also began helping other gardeners learn the same skills. She taught seed-saving and gardening classes in her own garden, at local community organizations, and at educational events. Rather than encouraging beginners to grow dozens of unusual vegetables at once, she recommends starting with just a few varieties and adding one new crop each season.
That advice reflects the way her own journey unfolded. She did not begin with an ambitious plan to preserve hundreds of heirloom vegetables. Instead, she built her collection slowly through years of observation, practice, and patience. Her story reflects the ideas that Seed Savers Exchange based its mission upon, which is to link gardeners who grow heirloom crops and save their seeds so that they won’t disappear forever.
A small thought of saving
What Kathleen Plunkett-Black saw in that deserted garden in Wisconsin was a collection of dried bean pods that could have easily gone unnoticed. Instead, they became the starting point for decades of careful seed stewardship. Her work shows that preserving heirloom vegetables does not always begin with a scientific project or a large collection. It might begin with one gardener noticing bean pods and considering them worth replanting again.
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