Heirloom Vegetables and Flowers

What’s so great about heirlooms? Explore the history of the modern seed-saving movement and the wonderful stories behind heirloom vegetables and flowers. Find out what makes them so special, and make a place for them in your own garden.

Erica Smith joined the Master Gardeners in 2007 and became a specialist in vegetables, helping to found the University of Maryland Extension's Grow It Eat It program and leading the Derwood Demonstration Garden's vegetable beds for 10 years. She is now the co-chair of Montgomery County Master Gardeners' Speakers Bureau, and writes monthly for the Maryland Grows Blog. Erica is the author of a series of time travel novels, volunteers with the HarvestShare and Community Food Rescue programs against hunger, and grows lots of native, edible, and other interesting plants at her home and community garden plot in Germantown, Maryland.