JoHN Seymour

Roundstone Native Seed LLC

I am the Cofounder and President of Roundstone Native Seed. I also serve on the Executive Board of the American Seed Trade Association and its Environmental and Conservation Seed Committee. I grew up on a beef cattle and tobacco farm in central Kentucky. In the heart of what was historically a step rolling grassland known as the Big Barrens region. I attended School at Western Kentucky University where I studied agriculture. 29 years ago, this fall, my father Randy and I went out into the few Prairie remnants that remained in our in our area, with 5 gallon buckets and started hand collecting Native seeds. For use in restorations for the Nature Conservancy and for the National Park service. Since that time, we now have native seed production in seven states across the East and Southeast and raise a little over 200 different species of native grasses wildflowers and forbs. All of which are still started by gathering from the wild and grown in the eco regions that they are found in. As a lover of all things wild, I find myself called to be a steward of, to protect and to restore, perhaps our greatest wild ecosystem that was mostly gone before I ever came to know it, our native grasslands.