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Seeding our Forested Future: The Holden Seed Bank

• Guest: Kim Lessman • Episode 58

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Holden Forest & Gardens is seeding Ohio's forested future through the Holden Seed Bank at the Holden Arboretum, which will soon celebrate its first anniversary. In this episode, we speak with Seed Bank Manager Kim Lessman about how this "restoration" seed bank works, how she became its manager, and how her work forms the core of new climate-fighting reforestation efforts across the region by eliminating a bottleneck in local tree planting efforts - the need for seeds. The Holden Seed Bank collects and processes seeds from native "workhorse" tree species like hickories, oaks, and hemlocks, which local nurseries grow into seedlings to support regional restoration projects and tree planting efforts. The work of the Holden Seed Bank is helping build resilient, biodiverse forests that can face our changing climate by providing thousands and thousands of seeds of local ecotype collected in our region. A Celebration of Seeds event will be held on August 8 at the Cleveland Botanical Garden and feature panelists from Holden Seed Bank, Cleveland Metroparks, the Pollinator Project, and Wild Ones Greater Cleveland to celebrate its one-year anniversary. Join us for all the tree-loving details.   

Guest:
Kimberly Lessman, Manager, Holden Restoration Seed Bank - klessman@holdenfg.org

Resources:
About Holden Forest & Gardens
About the Holden Seed Bank
Celebration of Seeds - August 8 at the Cleveland Botanical Garden
Visit the Cleveland Botanical Garden and the Holden Arboretum


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Diane Bickett:

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, a podcast for the eco-curious in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Bickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together we speak with local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind. Hello friends, legend has it that at the time of Ohio's settlement, our state was so wildly forested that a squirrel could travel from Lake Erie to the Ohio River without ever touching the ground. Now, less than 30% of our state is forested, but one local organization, H holden Forest and Gardens, is making an investment in Ohio's forested future through the Holden Seed Bank, and speaking with us today is the manager of that seed bank, Kim Lessman. The Holden Seed Bank is nearing its one-year anniversary. Please join us to hear how the seed bank works and how this project forms the core of new climate-fighting restoration efforts across the region. Welcome, Kim. Hi Diane. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming. So, Kim, let's s tart by talking about what a seed bank is and what the Holden seed bank is. You know, when I hear that term, I think of the Svalbard seed bank in Norway, which is storing seeds in the permafrost in the event of a global catastrophe. So how is what you're doing different?

Kim Lessman:

So that's a great place to start. So a seed bank is a highly controlled space where seeds from different plants are stored for future use. Seed bank facilities typically provide all of the necessary conditions that one would need to safely store seeds in perpetuity. So, for example, the Holden Restoration Seed Bank. We highly monitor the moisture content, the humidity, the temperature and the circulation of that space, which is also probably what all of these other big seed banks do, like the Svalbard Seed Bank. But what's different and what's really unique about the Holden Restoration Seed Bank is that it's in the name. Actually it is a restoration seed bank, so I like to call it an active seed bank or a dynamic space. Seeds are coming in and they are going out just as quickly as they come in, that's, as quickly as they're leaving. And the way this is different is that we are not necessarily storing seeds for biological preservation or for conservation, much like the Svalbard is your focus is on trees.

Kim Lessman:

Yes, that is what we are primarily focused on. Yeah, so the Holden Seed Bank is focused on collecting native species, native seeds of native species, with the end goal of using those seeds to support restoration projects in Northeast Ohio. So a restoration seed bank is an active space. Seeds are coming in, they're also going out. Versus a seed bank like this fallboard seed vault, those seeds are being stored really long term and I think something interesting about that seed bank is that it's also working toward preserving our global food supply. And there's another seed bank it's called the Millennium Seed Bank and that is over at the Royal Botanic Gardens and they're really focused on preserving native seed species, again in perpetuity. So both of these seed banks this traditional space is really focused on small collections, keeping them long term and really just trying to steward as much biodiversity and genetic diversity as possible. The Holden Seed Bank we're trying to bring seeds in and then push them right back out.

Diane Bickett:

So you're filling a need in the community to support local tree planting programs, correct?

Kim Lessman:

Our seed bank is working to fill that niche. One thing that we have found over the last year is that there are not enough native seeds stored anywhere to support restoration efforts, which is a huge. There's a huge bottleneck in restoration in our region, and that being that there just isn't enough seeds, and so something we're really trying to address with our seed bank is having a well-stocked facility. So we want to make sure that partners who are looking for tens of thousands of native trees in our region can get those of local ecotype for their projects trees and shrubs and then working with local businesses like Native Nurseries to grow them into tree seedlings for restoration. So who's doing the?

Diane Bickett:

collecting of the seeds for you.

Kim Lessman:

That will be Holden. That will be myself and our team of incredible volunteers and potentially a few other folks next year.

Diane Bickett:

Okay. Are you collecting them at the Arboretum next year? Okay, are you collecting them at the Arboretum? We are Okay.

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, so we, yeah, we have. Holden has roughly 3,000 acres of natural area that we can play around with, and most of the species that we are looking to collect and store in the seed bank can be found on Holden's campus.

Diane Bickett:

So what are some of those?

Kim Lessman:

Some of those species. I like to call them the workhorse species, which is definitely not my term, but it is a term that is widely used in this world. Some of those will be the hickories, white and red oaks. Of course, a handful of birches are used. We also try to focus on a few other species like ash and hemlock and beech, but that's for research that I can mention later.

Diane Bickett:

Okay, so you refer to them as workhorses. Are they more resistant to disease? Why is that?

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, so a workhorse species is. How would I describe that? It is a species that is commonly found in some of our native forests. It typically has a lot of benefits to being in our forest, so it's a food source for wildlife, for pollinators. Perhaps it has a lot of stake in our natural area. We'll put it that way.

Diane Bickett:

Are they fast growing too, then?

Kim Lessman:

I don't know about that. I don't know if they're necessarily fast growing, but they're definitely most commonly used.

Diane Bickett:

So you and your fellow seed collectors collect the seeds from the arboretum. Then what happens?

Kim Lessman:

Okay, so we collect the seeds. For example, last year we had five to six five-gallon buckets of black walnuts. We bring all of those back to the seed bank and this is kind of where they begin their processing and their cleaning the seed bank and this is kind of where they begin their processing and their cleaning. So most of those buckets we actually just kind of sat them in the seed bank and let those husks naturally decompose so that we could easily process the nuts from those husks, and that is the same. I mean black walnut might not be the best example here. I mean black walnut might not be the best example here, but typically you know, any seed comes into that seed bank and it begins its process of being cleaned and further stored.

Diane Bickett:

Do you do research on the seeds?

Kim Lessman:

themselves to ensure that they're going to be viable.

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, we do so.

Kim Lessman:

There's a lot of really fun tools and technology and different pieces of equipment in the seed bank that we get to play around with, and some of those tools were monitoring the moisture content of the seeds, making sure that, before we store the seeds long term, the interior moisture is exactly where we want it, which ultimately will ensure its shelf life.

Kim Lessman:

We also have we have not done it yet, but this year we are going to be doing a lot of germination testing and viability testing on the seed that we bring in the seed bank. Okay, and I'm not performing research myself as the seed bank manager, but there are a handful of scientists who are working with different species in the seed bank. So, for example, one of my colleagues is studying the emerald ash borer, and so the seed bank right now is currently stocked full of white and green ash seed, which she is then sending out to other seed labs and researchers and scientists in the country, and then we have Are they doing, then, some research to try to modify those seeds in some way so they're resistant to the emerald ash borer?

Kim Lessman:

They're not modifying the seed, so to speak, but what they're doing is, if I'm not mistaken, they are studying, they're trying to find out why these trees are resistant to that emerald ash borer. So they're not only studying the trees, but they are going to start growing those seeds into seedlings to see where in the genetics these trees are resistant to the emerald ash borer.

Diane Bickett:

Wow, that's really cool.

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, it's pretty impressive stuff over there, for sure, for sure.

Diane Bickett:

So, coming up on your one-year anniversary of the seed bank, congratulations. What are you most proud of and what does the seed bank actually look like, and who funded it and how did it come to be?

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, okay. So I will paint you a picture of what we're looking at when we, when we visualize the seed bank. Um, it is a bright, white, refurbished shipping container. Um, and most of the time when you walk into so there's like a double door to really keep the temperature and the humidity and the climate controlled in there. So you walk through a double set of doors and as soon as you open those big doors and walk in, I feel like the first comment out of everybody's mouth is wow, this is really nice.

Diane Bickett:

It doesn't look like a shipping container at all.

Kim Lessman:

It doesn't look like a shipping container at all. So on one side are a bunch of typical cabinets, there is a sink for cleaning and processing, there are four restaurant-style shelving units, so imagine those like big metal trays that get slid onto those movable carts. We have a dehumidifier in there, a huge temperature unit on the back wall and then on the right-hand side is just a bunch of open shelves where we plan to store containers and containers and buckets of seeds.

Diane Bickett:

Okay, so what's the turnaround then? From collection to when you're able to distribute those to a greenhouse or a garden center that can grow that into a seedling.

Kim Lessman:

Great question. It really depends on the species and on the need whether or not that seed is going to have a long shelf life in our seed bank. From the moment a seed comes into the seed bank, I would say it has about five to six weeks before it is vacuum sealed and stored in one of our refrigerators. So it's pretty quick. The goal of that space is to bring seeds in and to dry them to their desired moisture content and then seal them for the following year. That being said, seeds could be in the seed bank for a year. They could be in there for five years. We have capacity to store for 10 or plus years but again, with a restoration seed bank we're really hoping to bring high quality, high volume seed in and then redistribute it to our project partners in the community.

Diane Bickett:

So who are some of those project partners then, who are doing the tree planting work? Well, I guess We've interviewed some of them on this podcast. I'm sure you have.

Kim Lessman:

You know. So one of the first things I did when I took this role as seed bank manager was I tried to get everybody who was a stakeholder of the seed bank to the table for a conversation. So we brought in lots of different conservation organizations, a couple of folks from different universities. We've also been communicating with local, state and federal government agencies and just trying to get as many people in the conversation as possible. Specifically, what I can speak on is we have a pretty fun project coming up with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History where we're going to help support their Ashtabula River restoration project. They're going to plant 10,000 trees in 2025.

Kim Lessman:

And since we're new in this world of collecting seed and growing them into trees, we agreed to provide 1,000 trees in 2026. So for a given restoration project, you might have 10% casualties. Yeah, 10%, I think, is that what it is. 10% to 15% of those trees might not survive the following year. So we agreed to work with them to provide those trees the following year. We've also been in conversation with the Nature Conservancy to kind of work with them in a similar capacity.

Diane Bickett:

Okay.

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, cleveland Metro Parks. We are definitely in conversation with Cleveland Metro Parks as well.

Diane Bickett:

Good. Cleveland Tree Coalition Yep.

Kim Lessman:

Absolutely, absolutely. Who else? We've been in good conversation with Summit Metro Parks, lake Metro Parks, cleveland Erie, as well as Toledo Metro Parks.

Diane Bickett:

Yeah, that's great. I think you know we talk about tree planting a lot, but we never really hear about where the trees come from, where the seeds come from, and it's here or it will be, so that's really exciting, or it will be, so that's really exciting. I want to talk about how you're working to prepare the region for future threats to our trees through your seed bank, by providing more diverse species or helping grow trees that are more resistant to stress. So can you talk about that? Yeah, definitely.

Kim Lessman:

I feel like this is a really good time to mention this golden word, or golden words local ecotype New one, yeah, a new one, a new buzzword. It's been on my radar for the last year that I've been in this role and so I'll start with that. So a local ecotype is a species that has been adapted to a specific geographic environment and, as a result, has evolved to be genetically different from other members of the same species found in any other environment, from other members of the same species found in any other environment. So in simple terms, that means it is as local as it gets. So if we collect seed from white oak trees in the Lake Erie region, those are going to be genetically different than something we might collect from Atlanta, georgia, for example.

Kim Lessman:

And something we really want to do with this seed bank is we want to provide all of our partners and stakeholders in the region who are working on restoration and reforestation. We want to make sure that they have the opportunity to source native plant materials of local ecotype. Right now, most folks who are planting these 10,000 trees, for example, have to source them from a different part of our country, so to speak. Maybe not necessarily a different ecoregion, but these are not always coming from seed that was collected in our region, and so that's really what we're trying to address.

Diane Bickett:

So local ecotype.

Kim Lessman:

Local ecotype. It's as local as it gets.

Diane Bickett:

Local as it gets best able to adapt. I mean, it's already adapted to growing here, so it's probably going to live Exactly.

Kim Lessman:

It's already hardwired for our region. It knows what is happening here.

Diane Bickett:

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a seed bank manager. That's not like a title that you ever study in college, definitely not. But you do have a cool background. You're A bobcat fellow bobcat.

Kim Lessman:

I am a bobcat, I always have to call those out.

Diane Bickett:

I also read you're an urban farmer. You used to work for the Cleveland Seed Bank. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, it's definitely a fun journey. I would say it's the road less traveled. You know from start to finish. Let's see, I am a bobcat and I originally studied to be a middle school teacher. And I originally studied to be a middle school teacher and when I finished school back in 2013, I wasn't necessarily fully interested in jumping into a traditional classroom, but I was very much enamored with gardening and homesteading and learning how to feed myself, and so I made this list in my local library and I sat down and said, okay, how can I do?

Kim Lessman:

Yes, I want to work with kids teaching, but I also want to work with food and gardens, and I found the farm to school movement and I worked and slowly started working my way into the food and farming community over the last 10 years. At some point I worked for a farm in the Puget Sound and they were a seed production farm, and so that was the first time I really got my hands on what it means to plant a seed and then wait seven months and harvest seed again. When I moved back home to Cleveland Ohio in 2018, I set out on a little personal passion project mission to start an urban farm to address food insecurity and to work within a food desert and try to see how I can support this region in that capacity.

Diane Bickett:

What was the name of your farm.

Kim Lessman:

Otherhand. Okay, where was it? Uh, it's on the west side of cleveland, on west 61st street. Um, still alive and thriving as we speak so that's your farm still, yeah, that is still. That's still my passion project. Just have all of the what is it? All of the rungs and all the irons in the fire I've got all the rungs in the fire.

Kim Lessman:

But when I moved home to Cleveland, I stumbled across the Cleveland Seed Bank and it was really exciting to find an organization who was not only working with trying to build a regional seed network, but they were really passionate about addressing food insecurity. So it was a match made in heaven and they really invested in my personal knowledge and my professional development of becoming a seed expert in Northeast Ohio, so to speak. And combine your education background too combination of wanting to be a teacher to really just understand our world and help people understand and slowly walking this path until I found myself in the world of seeds Wow, Very much embedded in there.

Diane Bickett:

Wow, Just follow your passions. People Take you where you need to be. The Cleveland Seed Bank is a little bit different than the Holden Seed Bank. You said before we started recording that they're more focused on crops and seed sharing. Is there like red tape or any obstacles that prevent the free exchange of seeds among people and organizations in Ohio?

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, there actually is. So every state has their own set of seed laws, and Ohio's seed laws are a little bit protective when it comes to open sourced seed sharing, and so you know, things like seed libraries are actually a little tricky to facilitate in our community, same with the open exchange of certain native species like milkweed or ironweed and certain grasses, and so there's actually a group of folks right now who are working on something called House Bill 364. Okay, and they're hoping to make- that's in. Ohio.

Speaker 3:

It's in Proposed Ohio law.

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, it's a proposed Ohio law and I believe it is up for a vote soon, maybe by the end of July. Oh okay, which is super exciting. And this proposed legislation would essentially make seed exchanging through seed libraries legal.

Diane Bickett:

Okay, Well that's good to know. Are other states following a similar path, or are they already there?

Kim Lessman:

That's a good question. There are a lot. There are a handful of states who are already there and they always have been. Okay, not surprising, not surprising, yeah.

Diane Bickett:

Okay, well, I want to talk about your one-year anniversary event. To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Seed Bank, you're hosting a celebration of seeds event, which I am honored to have been asked to facilitate a panel discussion. So can you tell us more about that?

Kim Lessman:

Yeah, absolutely, it's on August 8th. It's on August 8th, I guess I could start there. So it will be hosted at the Cleveland Botanical Garden on August 8th from 6 to 8.30 PM. The cost is going to be $10 per ticket and you can register online. Those are the logistics, the fun part about this event. So my cog league, jen, and I have been working on figuring out a way that we could honor one year of Northeast Ohio having a seed bank, one year being in operation, and really just kind of highlight all of the folks in Northeast Ohio who are working with native seeds and who are working in restoration in some capacity.

Diane Bickett:

I'm looking forward to it and meeting the panelists. Who do you have on the panel?

Kim Lessman:

Yeah. So we're going to have a handful of experts in our region. We are going to have myself representing Holden Forests and Gardens. We are going to have a pollinator project, who we are working extensively with this summer. Pollinator Project, who we are working extensively with this summer. We are also going to have somebody from the Cleveland Metro Parks and Greater Cleveland Wild Ones as well. So it should be, a really good conversation, All right sign up.

Diane Bickett:

And for those of you who are not familiar, the Cleveland Botanical Garden in Cleveland and the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland make up the Holden Forest and Gardens. Yeah, you got it correctly. When did that merger happen? Like 10 years ago or so? Yeah, about 10 years ago, these two institutions merged together to form Holden Forest and Gardens. Yeah, and the Holden Arboretum is an absolute treasure. For those who are unfamiliar, it is located about 30 minutes east of the city, 30 minutes east of downtown Cleveland, and it is comprised of 3,500 acres, more or less. About this is not only is Holden Arboretum one of the largest arboretum in the country, but 3,000 acres. Of that, 3,500 is actually high quality forested natural area that we can visit and walk through Absolutely. Yeah, we have a few natural areas Stebbins, gulch and Little Mountain, to name a few, and the Canopy Walk too,

Diane Bickett:

Walk and the Canopy Walk and the Emerg.

Kim Lessman:

Absolutely, those are must-sees. Yeah, yeah, you have an incredible view of Lake Erie from the Emergent Tower. It's absolutely worth a climb.

Diane Bickett:

So, of all the tools we have for fighting climate change, how would you rank the importance of reforestation?

Kim Lessman:

Reforestation is the number one natural solution to mitigate climate change.

Diane Bickett:

Well we all appreciate your work. I hope that this model can be replicated in other communities to keep that you know the tree planting going, and I really want to thank you for joining us on the podcast today to talk about your work, and I saw a quote. I don't know who to attribute it to, but it's never underestimate the power of a planted seed.

Kim Lessman:

Thank you, Kim. Thank you so much, Diane.

Speaker 3:

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeakclecom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.

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Diane Bickett

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Greg Rotuno

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