Ottawa gardens may have already seen their first snow of the season, but a local seed library is in the midst of their busiest time of the year.
The Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library (OWSL) is hosting a series of free native seed giveaways across Ottawa each Saturday between October 25 and December 13. Native plants are adapted to the freeze- thaw cycle of our fall and spring, and native seeds need exposure to the cold stratification this cycle gives them to sprout. The OWSL’s seed giveaways are timed so that you can get your seeds in preparation for winter sowing.
The seed giveaway taking place closest to Stittsville is on December 13, 2025, from 1 to 3 pm in Hall A at the Tony Graham Recreation Complex, 100 Charlie Rogers Place, in Stittsville.
The OWSL is a grassroots organization that promotes gardening with native plants, which bring a host of benefits not only to your garden, but also to the local ecosystem. They are easy to care for because they are adapted to our climate. Once established, they require virtually no watering or weeding so they are much less work than gardening with non-native plants. They also support wildlife by providing food and habitat for birds, butterflies, bees, and other native pollinators. Introduced and modified species displace natural food sources. Growing native plants can help restore ecosystems and re-establish corridors of habitat for wildlife.
Established in 2020, the OWSL is celebrating its five-year anniversary this fall. Over the past five years, it has seen some incredible growth: from hosting a handful of seed exchanges out of driveways in its first season, to now hosting a series of weekly seed giveaways at community centres and other spaces across Ottawa. Last year alone, the library distributed over 100,000 packages of seeds from 265 native species to almost 5,000 community projects, schools, and individuals. It has also expanded its reach beyond Ottawa: once in-person seed giveaways are finished for the season, the OWSL opens up online orders and will mail seeds for free. In past years, it has seen orders from as many as eight different provinces.
All of this work is made possible by the dozens of passionate and dedicated volunteers–affectionately named the library’s “busy bees”–who harvest, clean, and pack seeds, fold seed envelopes, work the library’s seed and plant giveaways, represent the library at community events, package and mail seeds, and more.
As part of its work to promote gardening with native plants across the city, the OWSL also launched this fall an online catalogue that features 50 data points on over 300 native species. The result of more than 1,000 hours of work from its volunteers who researched the species, compiled the data, and built the catalogue, it is a fantastic resource for Ottawans looking to develop a common understanding of how to steward native species. And it has launched just in time to put together a wish list of seeds prior to attending a seed giveaway event.
Find more information about the seed giveaways and browse the new online catalogue on the OWSL website: wildflowerseedlibrary.ca. If you can’t make it to an in-person seed giveaway, online seed orders will open on the OWSL website on December 26, 2025.