Sowing Seeds of Change

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Hosts 12th Annual Conservation Symposium on the Need for Seed

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, featuring native California poppies in the foreground. | Credit: Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Want to see a healthy environment blossom? Seeds are the first step. But right now, we don’t have enough.

“Seeds of Change” was the theme of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s 12th annual Conservation Symposium on Saturday, which was all about how tiny seeds can sprout into big changes for native ecosystems.

However, the need for seed is great.

“Today, we’re hearing a story about a conservation challenge,” said Denise Knapp, director of conservation research at the Botanic Garden, during the event’s introduction. “Then we’re going to put our heads together and go, ‘Okay, what’s the essence of the issue? What can we all do?’”

The Botanic Garden’s main mission is to conserve native plants, which are crucial for biological diversity. Native plants can save the world, Knapp continued. “Why do we care? Well, how many of you like to breathe clean air? How many of you like to drink clean water?” she asked the audience.

She then introduced the topic of the day: seeds. Acorns, for example, are tomorrow’s oak trees. And seeds feed and are dispersed by a variety of wildlife, such as black bears and the adorable California quail.

The work of creating habitat, Knapp emphasized, starts with seeds, and restoring wildlands and building habitats in our cities will take “a whole lot” of them.

Peggy Olwell, the Plant Conservation and Restoration Program Lead for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Washington, D.C., is tackling habitat restoration through the department’s Native Seed Program, part of her life’s work to spread native seeds where they are needed most.

Seeds are in great need for habitat restoration around the world, which was a main talking point during the Botanic Garden’s Conservation Symposium. | Credit: Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

For her efforts, Olwell received the Garden’s 2025 John C. Pritzlaff Conservation Award. “It takes a village to raise a kid; it takes a village to do the kind of work that we have ahead of us,” she said. “We haven’t finished it by a long shot.”

Olwell then segued into a talk on “Seeds, Sustainability, and Society,” in which she talked about how plants are vital to life on Earth, but they’re underappreciated — seeds even more so. She highlighted that, globally, 1.9 billion tons of native seed are needed to restore damaged ecosystems.

We need more seeds, she stressed, and we need more networks and infrastructure to gather and distribute them — for native habitats and wildlife, sure, but also for us.

“No one is going out to parking lots in the United States to do recreation. They’re just not,” she said with a chuckle.

Following Olwell’s talk, speakers highlighted the importance of “seed banking,” or storing seeds to preserve and plant, at the giant California Seed Bank in Claremont; rare plant conservation and recovery as an insurance policy against extinction; harnessing genetics to restore plant communities, by using the right seed in the right place at the right time; Indigenous seed and plant knowledge; how native plants and seeds can help meet climate change head-on; and supporting regional diversity with locally sourced plants.

The event wrapped up with all of the symposiums’ accomplished, expert speakers participating in a panel discussion. People worried about the future of climate change and conservation work (on a side note, President Trump just nominated oil and gas advocate Kathleen Sgamma to head the BLM) and questioned how communities can be active participants.

Building love for native plants, being informed, bringing different ideas and cultural perspectives to the table, and supporting local and legislative efforts to nurture native plant communities are a few ways for professional and citizen botanists to start.

“We need major buy-in … so that this is just the norm, that caring about the planet is the default,” said speaker Heather Schneider, senior rare plant conservation scientist at the Botanic Garden. “I hope we can continue to inject that energy into our communities.”

Community members can also be part of the solution, Knapp said, by planting native plants where you live, work, or play. In a few words: Go plant seeds.

Watch the entire symposium here.