DALLAS — In the spirit of our beautification queen, Lady Bird Johnson, the Dallas Public Library is in the business of growing (and we don’t mean the building’s getting bigger).

“A seed library is a lot like a regular library,” library employee Mark Draz said Monday. “It’s a place where community members can come get resources, in this case, seeds, for free.”

It’s a seed library fully contained within an old, rolling card catalog.

The message is to plant seeds of sustainability in people’s minds by using the very real seeds of plants like lettuce or melon.

“You go to the supermarket and see all the produce there, and it’s easy to forget that that tomato started as a seed that someone somewhere grew and harvested and transported to you,” Draz said.

The process is easy. You pick the seed packet you want, and off you go.

So when do you return it? And more importantly, how do you return it?

“No one is required to return seeds,” Draz said. “We do have some information we’ve collected about how to save seeds, so if you want to return seeds you can.”

Most of their seeds actually come from seed exchange services and expert growers, so don’t feel pressured to bring some back at the end of the year. They’ll definitely welcome it, though!

The seed labeling system, meanwhile, stems from how easy to how tough it is to collect seeds to take back at the end of the growing cycle.

At its root, this one’s simply a service from the library to its community. If you have a blossoming green thumb, you can find the seed library on the library’s 6th floor.