Sustain-A-Culture designed and planted our heirloom exhibition garden in 2016 and 2017. Throughout the season we maintained two 4’x16′ raised beds and grow a large variety of specimens whose seeds continue to be propagated and preserved by William Woys Weaver at the Roughwood Seed Foundation and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Some of our other heirloom seed resources include Seed Savers Exchange, Heirloom Seeds, Amishland Heirloom Seeds, and the Hudson Valley Seed Company.
In the early spring you can taste the Mennonite Speckled Leaf Lettuce, a green that found a lot of popularity with Philadelphians in the eighteen hundreds. Check out the Amaranth plant, an ancient grain originating in the Americas in 6700 BC. Pick the sweet Mammi Huber’s Stuffing Pepper developed by an Old Order Mennonite and Lancaster County gardener. And delight at the beauty of the Buena Mulata pepper cultivated by famous folk artist Horace Pippin. We hope these heirloom plants, their varied tastes and their stories can bring our shared history to life.
Pastorius Community Gardens 