The wooden box on a post outside Amanda Moscone’s Bangor home looks like most little free libraries, where people typically take or leave books.
But opening the door reveals shelves of greenery instead: potted houseplants, cuttings and propagated leaves. A smaller box below it holds free vegetable seed packets and pots.
Moscone started this “seedling library” last year as a form of therapy.
“I wanted to kind of bring some joy back into my life,” she said, “and what better way than to share my love and passion for plants with the community in a really fun way?”
It’s taken off locally and online. While seed libraries have become popular in Maine in recent years, Moscone’s project goes further by offering live plants for free, and has fostered a new community around her 48 Sixth St. home and beyond.
In April, most library materials come from roughly 200 houseplants that Moscone tends and propagates in an upstairs in-law apartment.
Later in the season, she’ll add vegetable seedlings from her greenhouse and extra produce from her garden. When flowers die back in the fall, she’ll collect their seeds for the library.
Visitors don’t have to leave a plant, but are encouraged to take one and experiment with growing, she said.
That makes learning affordable and offers a way to use extra material from plants that need to be cut back or divided to thrive.
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“[Plants] reward you,” Amanda Moscone said. “If you take care of them and love them, they reward you, either with flowers, new growth, fruits, vegetables.” Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN -
Amanda Moscone propagates leaves and cuttings from her roughly 200 houseplants in an in-law apartment upstairs of her Bangor home. A new plant can grow from a single leaf. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN -
Passers-by take and leave plants, seeds and supplies at the Brouse House Gardens little library in Bangor. The plants are brought indoors if temperatures dip below the 50s. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN
Benton Ross, 11, and his mother, Krystal Martin, stopped by on Tuesday to pick out plants after Ross’ aunt saw the library on social media. They planned to return with extra pots to leave for others.
Ross went home with an aloe, Moscone’s suggestion for something easier to care for. He thinks plants are cool and likes watching them grow.
“It’s a little like a Pokemon collection, but a plant collection,” he said.
The family has thought about starting some free library of their own, Martin said, though probably not plants – they’re still working on keeping those alive. But they like the sharing model.
“We’re hoping it catches on and more people do it,” she said.
Moscone posts about the seedling library as Brouse House Gardens on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, which has brought visitors and new friends across the country. Some ask advice for starting seedling libraries of their own (cover it from the rain, shelter it in winter and add ventilation, Moscone said).
The library has also connected her to many people in the neighborhood she wouldn’t have met otherwise, giving them a reason to stop and talk, she said. She also aimed to set an example for her sons, ages 20, 18 and 6, of how to treat their community.
“Getting to know people…restored my faith in humanity, that there are kind people out there, that people can still be neighborly,” she said.
Recently, one visitor said finding the library had made her day. When a mother and daughter stopped to drop off a “happy bean” plant, the daughter said she was starting a memorial garden for her late grandmother.
Last weekend, three visitors returned to surprise Moscone with a notebook, which has become a guest log tucked into the library.
“I get to hear all these really wonderful and sweet and moving stories about people, and how gardening and plants impact their lives,” she said.
