A library where you can borrow seeds as well as books is now a reality in another NSW town.

A seed library has been opened at the Port Macquarie Hastings Council Library in northern NSW.

For ABC Gardening Australia presenter Costa Georgiadis it’s the first seed library he’s seen in a library.

But technical services librarian Brendan McDonald believes they are the second one after Nundle.

“The idea is for people who are really keen to save and share seeds, they will then let some of that plant go to seed, harvest it and return it,” he said.

“But there are other people that aren’t going to want to do that and aren’t able to do that, so that’s fine they can just borrow seeds and get planting.

“It’s really that idea of just growing your own healthy food and getting that in people’s minds.”

But unlike a traditional library, if you don’t return the seeds, for whatever reason, there is no fine.

At the moment the Seed Library has 24 varieties of seeds for borrowing.

“We’ve got basil, broccoli chives – I’m just going through alphabetically because I’m a librarian – coriander, peas, spinach, silverbeet, zucchini tomato,” he said.

“Obviously they’re seasonal so some are going to be appropriate at the moment and some are not until spring and other seasons, so there’s a lot.

“We’ve already got donated seeds that have come back; there are a lot of people in the community that have seeds that they save and they want to share them and they need an avenue to do that.”

There is also a gardening literature section in the library to support the Seed Library.

“We’ve got that wide range of non-fiction resources and there’s a whole heap on community gardening, on gardening itself, organic gardening, seed saving,” he said.

“If they don’t know how to grow a seed, we’ve got a book to tell them how to do it.”