Protocol: Distributing seeds for native plants with poster stations

By Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D., Skype a Scientist

Last updated April 11 2025

The goal of this project is to distribute native plant seeds for free to neighbors in Philadelphia. We want to make it easy for people to create habitat to support local biodiversity. With this project, we use an art-forward approach to educate people about the importance of native plants, and give them some of the supplies to plant these species. With this method, we collaborated with 15 seed-station volunteers and 20 packing volunteers to distribute approximately 4,000 packs of seeds across the city of Philadelphia.

The cost for this project can range wildly depending on the types of volunteers you have in your network, the types of seeds you choose, and number of seed packets you want to make. I would estimate the cost between $300-1500.

Protocol

  • 1. Identify plants

Identify 3-5 species of plants native to your region that you would like to highlight to your community. You may want to select those that are relatively easy to plant in your target area and easy to find for sale near you.

  • 2. Write an article

Write an article that you can host online that describes how to grow native plants in your area. Consider the diversity of yard types in your region. City residents may have no soil at all, whereas suburb residents may have to deal with neighbors complaining about “unkempt” yards. Tailor this article to the needs of your specific audience. For reference, here is what we wrote for Philly, where few people have yards: https://www.dogoodshit.club/post/planting-native-plants-in-philly 

  • 3. Source seeds

Identify 3-5 plant species you can source seeds for affordably. These may or may not be the same 3-5 from step 1. Ideally, these seeds should not require cold-weather pre-treatment (stratification), and will be from your region’s “ecotype”. Ecotype indicates where the original parent plant was from. Some species grow over large geographic areas, so have genetic variation regionally. Picking seeds that originated near you is best practice. Some seed distributors will tell you what ecotype their seeds are, others will not.

  • 4. Design the posters

Hire an artist to illustrate those species. Decide whether you want one version of the poster or multiple. Expect to pay that artist about $500 per design; some may charge more. Including a QR code and shortURL (like those made at bit.ly or tinyurl.com) that links to the article you wrote makes it easy for people to learn more. Do not generate your poster with AI. Don’t you dare.

  • 5. Assemble seed packet supplies
  • Small plastic bags (we used 2x2 inch plastic sealing bags)
  • Sticker paper for labeling bags (we used 8.5x11” paper, split into 2 large stickers, typically used for labeling packages. You can use them with inkjet or laser printers!)
  • Clips to secure bags to posters. We used quilting clips.
  • Seeds (We source ours from Ernst Seeds because they note the ecotype, but your region may have better options. How much seed you buy will be limited by your budget and the amount of packs you want to create. I bought about 5 lbs of seeds for 2500 packets.)
  • 6. Make seed packets
  • We listed all the species in the mix on one side of the label, along with assurance that planting native flowers is easy. We included a QR code and shortURL to the how-to-plant article on the other side. Pack up the seed bags into larger bags to distribute to each person  who is hosting a poster. We used the classic brown paper lunch bag to hand out sets of 100 seed packs per poster.  The number of packs you give each volunteer will depend on the nearby residential density and your resources. For a major metropolitan area like Philadelphia, we gave each volunteer 100-200 packs, depending on location (mostly based on how busy that cross-street is).
  • 7. [Optional] Host a seed packet party 🥳

Assemble a party of volunteers to pack up seeds. We offered beer and soft pretzels to volunteers. We were about to assemble about 700 packets in one 3-hour session. We hosted our seed packet party at a community clubhouse, and had about 15 people come out to help. We had one group responsible for labeling the packets, and another group responsible for filling those packets with seeds. It was helpful to have a massive table for this, since all of the components required take up a lot of space. If you plan to host this in a public space, make sure you clear the activity with the manager of the space. When I hosted this event, seeds were everywhere, so I had to vacuum at the end. Don’t leave your hosts with a mess!

This gathering is also an opportunity to hand out posters that people can hang up where they live.

  • 8. Find poster hosts

Put a call out for volunteers to host seed distribution posters. You can use whatever you find works best for your community, but we used bluesky. Volunteers are essential for reporting any poster destruction (inevitable!), conveying reactions from neighbors, and restocking the clips with seed packs daily.

  • 9. Print the signs

We get ours printed at Fireball Printing. They run a ‘50 posters for $15’ deal, and are great community members. While many printers will offer UV coatings, these posters are not likely to survive long enough for bleaching to be a concern. I’d skip UV coating.

  • 10. Create the posters

Assemble the signs by adding clear tape (packing tape works) to the bottom ~2 inches of the paper. The tape will prevent rainwater from weakening the superglue connection between the clip and paper. Glue the clips on top of the tape. Give the superglue 24 hours to harden before installing.

  • 11. Install the posters

We used a staple gun to adhere signs to poles. Make sure you add plenty of staples (see image at the top of this document), since the public will be interacting with these signs, and the paper will need to hold more weight than usual.

  • 12. (optional) Donate to Skype a Scientist

Skype a Scientist relies on donations to operate. We have not received any grants for general operations since 2023, but continue offering as much as we can to our community for free. We can only do that with the support of our community. Please support us here.

Design considerations:

Our artist made a poster that included the phrase “take one and plant” right above where we glued the clips. This allowed us to easily cut off that part of the poster to quickly turn it into an educational/informational asset instead of a resource-intensive seed station. This is an easy way to use up excess posters. We distributed the cut-off signs at our little free science library as well as wheatpasted them around town. .