Seeds Underground Zine – No. 1

Welcome to the first publication of Seeds Underground – my zine on native gardening. As such, I’m starting off with an intro into native gardening for the reasons I got into it. I was battling invasive plants on my property, and I got sick of it. I’ve also included a few basic tips on garden design and where to find inspiration.

If you don’t know what a zine is, Merriam Webster defines it as a “noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter.” Zine is pronounced zeen, like the end of the word magazine.

A bit about zines…

Since native gardening is a specialized and unconventional subject matter, what better way to talk about it than with a zine? My introduction to zines was in the 90’s and early 2000’s punk and alt-rock scenes. I think there was a hacker zine too. That being said, zines go as far back as 100 years ago, as a way for Black artists, authors, and musicians to share their work. Publishers absolutely discriminated against marginalized communities, and the internet didn’t exist.

Thanks to the digital era, I don’t have to print, cut and fold these to hand out (though I might still do that for in-person markets). Zines have evolved into something that can be shared online as well as in person. But there’s something about zines that feels like taking back control… Yes, I’m sharing this here which will likely be stolen and fed to the machine, but there may be future publications that you can only obtain either by meeting me at a market or placing an order for some plants or seeds. It also requires you to print this out, cut and fold it so you can read it. The final result is tiny enough to fit in your pocket.

How to read this zine

When you print, fit to size, then trim off the edges. Since I drew this entirely by hand, I didn’t take bleed into consideration (I’m a bit out of practice). It’ll be a little smaller than the original but it should still be legible. That being said, I’m sure you have a handlens laying about somewhere, right? Here’s a link that explains how to fold a zine.

You’re welcome to share this with others if you like it and find the information helpful.

Oh, one last thing

Although I managed to stuff a ton of information into this zine, I realized after the fact I didn’t cover the questions on the cover in full detail. I’m going to pretend that was intentional. You can expect a zine that entirely focuses on invasive species in time for National Invasive Species Awareness Week in February at the latest (but probably, hopefully sooner).

You have two options to obtain this file. If you have a PDF reader, click on this link to download the file. Otherwise, you may right click on the image below and save it to your device to print.