Feminist Seed Bank is a “bank of knowledge”– not unlike a literal seed bank – that locates, interprets, preserves and celebrates plants and the practices germinating from them performed by women. We define a plant-based practice as art/craft, medicine and spiritual tradition that generate from a seed. Historically women have created and passed down these traditions central to their cultural identity and sovereignty. This work is now at risk of being lost due to the climate crises, as well as to industrialization, war and gender bias. Through gardens, publications, exhibitions, conversations, an open-source archive and DIY kits, the Feminist Seed Bank amplifies and monumentalizes this information before it is too late.

Some examples in the FSB include: Bosnian flax and hemp textiles; Indigenous American grass basket weavings; Georgian felted rugs depicting ancient plant talismans; Wiccan plant-based abortifacients; Venezuelan Yanomami plant medicine illustrations; and Central Asian steppe grass mats.

Feminist Seed Bank has been generously supported by organizations and individuals. FSB began as a project incubated by Monuments to Movements, a Project& initiative, co-founded by Neysa Page-Lieberman and Jane M. Saks. Seed funding was provided by the Kemper Foundation and Columbia College Chicago. The tool kit was created with volunteer input from scientists, ethnographers, curators and artisans.

FSB is building an internationally-panoramic network of collaborators to collect this information. Click on the map below to interact with our growing repository.