It’s a natural progression: You love gardening, so you decide to level up and grow your own garden. That means you have to buy seeds, so seed catalogs start flooding your mailbox and you quickly realize that buying seeds is just as addictive as any other shopping habit. On a large scale, seeds aren’t cheap either. They range from $3 a pack at the grocery store to ridiculous prices like $20 a pack at niche seed suppliers. For most home gardeners, you don’t need a whole pack of seeds, unless you’re talking carrots or radishes. That’s why you should get excited about seed libraries, which can save you money, give you access to locally tested seeds, and help you find other people who share your love of gardening.

A seed library is different from a book library only in that no one expects you to return the seeds. Someone simply decides to make their seed bank available to others in an easily accessible way, and you can take a few seeds of whatever kind you like, and leave the seeds you have to share. You can find seed libraries in settings like real libraries, tool libraries, or other community spaces. Often people host them in their front yards, in the same way they host Little Free Libraries.

The main benefit of using a seed library is saving money, but it’s certainly not the only one. Many people who leave seeds at the library are seed savers, meaning the seeds come from their own gardens, not from a seed house. This means you’ll get seeds that have been tested in your specific growing environment, so they’re more likely to survive and thrive. You may also have access to native plants that seed houses don’t have, which is part of a nationwide movement to reduce invasive species and return to the types of plants that are native to an area. Finally, you’ll likely meet other people who garden, and you’ll be able to become part of a community. In fact, one of the best ways to become a better gardener is to be around other gardeners.

There are a couple of ways to find a seed library near you. The first is to ask your local library. Librarians have a lot of local knowledge that often goes unused. You can also google “seed library near me” and there are entire sites dedicated to mapping seed libraries around the world.