Our responsibility is to care for the seeds, their stories and cultures, while perpetuating their cultivation and use. Roughwood began out of interest in plant diversity, family gardening, and the culture-human connection in each seed. The Seed Collection was founded in 1932 by H. Ralph Weaver of West Chester, PA as a way to feed his family and neighbors during the Depression. Since then it has gr
own to encompass circa 5,000 edible food plants from around the world. Our commitment at Roughwood is to explore our shared cultural heritage expressed through the gardens. It is our responsibility to care for the seeds and the stories and cultures that accompany them, and bring them to present use and memory. Food and seeds both are edible folk art. Through these actions we can create a more interestingly diverse, nutritious, and delicious world. It was Dr. William Woys Weaver's grandfather H. Ralph Weaver (1896-1956) whom, as mentioned earlier, founded the Seed Collection. During the Great Depression, when food was scarce for many households, he set out to feed his family from a one-acre plot in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Since he had been working on the Weaver family genealogy, he used his Lancaster County family connections to acquire heirloom seeds that had been grown in the Dutch Country for many generations. His passion for rare old-time varieties snowballed so that by the 1940s he managed to create one of the finest kitchen gardens in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Among the many frequent visitors to his garden was West Chester folk artist Horace Pippin from whom he acquired many rare peppers.
