The Hudson Valley Seed Co. began as the country’s first seed library at the Gardiner Library in Ulster County in 2004 and in the last 20 years has evolved to offer everything you could need for your home garden: organic vegetables, herbs, flowers and even fruit tree seedlings.
In 2024, Hudson Valley Seed opened a retail location adjacent to its farm in Accord and now offers plant and tree seedlings in addition to art and growing supplies. I spoke this week with co-founder Douglas Muller about the operation; his responses have been condensed.
There’s an emphasis among native-plant growers on ecotype seeds that are “trained” for local regions to benefit pollinators. Does that work with vegetables?
I wouldn’t call vegetables an ecotype. They are super-developed and substantially different from a wild species. Heirlooms are analogous in some ways in terms of preserving genetic diversity. Since we started the company, the climate has been outpacing some of the varieties. The challenge is about helping them to adapt to where we are now.
When we started, we were focused on preserving local heirlooms and genetics. While we still value that work, we had to shift to collaborating with Cornell University, for example, because the breeding work can’t keep up with the intensity of the extreme weather. Active seed breeding takes years and the climate is changing faster than that.
What trends do you see? What are the most popular plants?
During the pandemic, we saw a big increase in demand for vegetables, and then those gardeners discovered flowers. Dahlias are front and center. People are attracted to them because tubers are easier to grow out than seeds. The trend is rebalancing now with vegetables on the rise again.
How do you decide which plants to include in your catalog?
We are always keeping an eye on how balanced it is, evaluating tomatoes versus lettuce, for example. We trial seeds to see how the plants perform in season. It could be a wet year or a dry year. We never “baby” plants in trials. We try to put them through the conditions that an average home gardener would, assuming a certain amount of benign neglect. Things need to thrive autonomously.
You offer apple, pear and fig tree seedlings. How did that come about?
Five or six years ago, we partnered with a certified organic farm. They are propagators, and we were their first commercial company. What’s new is that we are shipping bare-root seedling trees.
What is your current favorite plant?
I’m not good at favorites — I turn a corner in the garden and there’s my next new favorite. We added a hatch pepper from a New Mexico breeding program that isn’t super spicy and can be used in a lot of ways, the NuMex Joe E. Parker chile. I love the Holly Hill Black Widow dahlia, too. It’s a dark, decorative, formal style. The Doe Hill pepper is a longtime favorite because it’s very sweet.
What staples should every garden have?
One lesson from the pandemic is that a lot of people learned that gardening is hard work. I encourage gardeners to focus on things you love and to get that hook to want to keep doing it. Recognize that you have limited bandwidth and ask yourself what you would be most happy to see coming out of this project. When you try to be more realistic, you can set up that feedback loop to make it positive.
The Hudson Valley Seed Co., at 11 Airport Road in Accord, is about an hour’s drive from the Highlands. Its retail shop is open from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday to Monday, or order online at hudsonvalleyseed.com. The greenhouses are open from April to October.
