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Photo: (left to right) Native Amazonian Mahogany, Huayruro, Pumaquiro seeds being collected, washed and placed in germinated beds.

We want to say a massive thank you to everyone who supported Plant Your Future through our ´óÏó´«Ã½ Appeal and to the amazing horticulturalist and author Frances Tophill for so beautifully lending her voice to our cause. We raised £34,135 which is all going towards the construction of a new first-of-its-kind Native Amazonian Seed Bank.

This seed bank will not only be crucial in supplying quality seed for our scale-up in reforestation over the coming years, but also help in the preservation of native, rare and increasingly endangered species of native trees, critical to the biodiversity and health of the Amazon Rainforest. Until now, seed banks in Peru have only been repositories of genetic materials and not functional in terms of providing the seed supply needed by communities or businesses alike to reforest land and enable the adoption of sustainable agroforestry.

We saw an opportunity to overcome this by creating a smallholder-run seed bank and building networks for seed collection with indigenous communities, and between indigenous and smallholder communities, where there is the greatest demand for seeds. With your help, we have been able to begin the design work with the expert help of our new trustee Dr Toby Parkes. Toby previously worked at the Millennium Seed Bank during his PhD studies, and we are thrilled to benefit from his thought leadership to adapt technologies used there to a more grassroots and rural setting in the Peruvian Amazon.

This Seed Bank project joins our wider reforestation programmes working with smallholder farming communities aimed at creating a paradigm shift from deforestation towards regenerative farming models that restore the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest. 

To find out more about our charity , please click this .