“Seeds are about abundance,” says Sara McCamant, co-founder of the Sebastopol Seed Library, “and abundance leads to sharing.”

That’s just what the seed library does, sharing seeds that are donated by local gardeners and those that are grown at the library’s quarter-acre seed garden. The library is open to all, seeds are free, and seed donations are welcome and encouraged, yet not required. There are no late fees.

A seed library is not a seed bank, which preserves seed in a controlled environment so that it remains viable indefinitely, thus ensuring the survival of its genetic heritage. A library makes seeds available to individuals in order to encourage small-scale gardening and farming. This seed must be used and replenished for a seed library to thrive.

Operated under the umbrella of the West County Community Seed Exchange, the Sebastopol Seed Library and its garden are located at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, not far from downtown. Bookshelves in a meeting room hold more than 140 varieties of seeds, some in glass jars, others in envelopes.

On the last Saturday of each month from January through October, the library is open to the public. In November and December, volunteers conduct a major inventory, not just cataloging what the library contains, but also confirming that all seed is viable. A group of 10 core volunteers maintain the collection, oversee the garden and teach classes in seed saving.

The seed library was started six years ago by McCamant and other members of Transition Sebastopol, which is part of the international Transition Towns movement. Simply put, the movement seeks, at a local level, to establish long-term community resilience in anticipation of what is believed to be a future of fewer resources.

When members of the Sebastopol group asked themselves what it takes to build a strong, enduring local food system, seeds quickly emerged as the answer. Today, most commercial seed is controlled by international corporations; such seed comes from around the world and is not necessarily viable here. More importantly, seed from these sources puts corporations in control of local farming in a fundamental way.

“Why don’t we build a local seed source?” Transition Towns folk said to each other, and the idea of a library of seeds soon blossomed, as it has all over the United States and beyond. When the Sebastopol Seed Library was launched in 2008, there were fewer than 10 similar libraries in the country. Today there are more than 150, with new ones in the works, including locally.

Sometime this year, a new seed library will open at the Healdsburg Regional Library, with seeds stored in a vintage card catalog that library director Bo Simons found. The project was spearheaded by Carolyn Harrison of Sonoma Antique Apple Nursery fame and members of Transition Healdsburg, which Harrison helped form.

In November 2013, Transition Healdsburg hosted a community seed swap at Healdsburg Shed; seeds that remained after the exchange formed the beginning of the new collection, which will be accessible to the public whenever the public library itself is open.

Sebastopol Seed Library, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 500 Robinson Road, Sebastopol, 707-829-5234, westcountyseedbank.blogspot.com

Healdsburg Seed Library, Healdsburg Regional Library, 139 Piper St., Healdsburg, 707-433-3772, sonomalibrary.org

 

Just north of Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, at Eighth and Davis streets, there’s an elementary school on one corner and a chiropractor’s office on another. Across the street, adjacent to the humming freeway, is a nondescript sand-colored building, a converted warehouse whose outer appearance offers no hint of what’s hidden inside.

Jack Leissring, 78, an artist and a former owner of the McDonald Mansion in Santa Rosa, has converted the warehouse into a luminous gallery for his wide-ranging, museum-quality art collection. It’s a high-ceilinged, two-story space with a startling variety of paintings, drawings and photographs covering every wall. Yet somehow it doesn’t feel cluttered.

“Almost every extra penny I have I spend on art; the other pennies I spent on women,” Leissring said, then paused and added, “I still have the art.”

Throughout the space are tables with sculptures and busts, many made by artists who have become his friends. Most pieces are by artists who work under the radar, not those celebrated by museums and top galleries.

“Every piece I’ve ever purchased is because of an emotional response,” Leissring explained, tapping a fist to his heart. “There’s a lot of love here; I’m emotionally involved with probably every piece.

“I have some big names, but that’s immaterial to me. This tendency we have to adulate some and ignore others is a tragic flaw.”

Leissring calls the warehouse the “emergency landing field” for his art, “in case I lose my house.” He lives next door to the grand mansion on McDonald Avenue, in its former carriage house, surrounded by his own sculptures and other artwork he’s created.

He purchased the McDonald Mansion in the mid-1970s and sold it in 2005, which he said was a relief. “It was too expensive: I was doing it for the city,” he said. The 19th-century home burned in the late 1970s. Leissring, who’s also a designer, restored it, saying it was “the best toy a boy could ever have.”

As a 12-year-old living in Milwaukee, Leissring acquired his first painting, in 1947, when the only collections his peers were interested in were baseball cards. A year later he commissioned a painting for the first time.

Leissring’s fascination with art deepened when he began to study the works of Michael Ayrton, a 20th-century English sculptor, painter and author. Leissring calls Ayrton “the most intelligent, loquacious, talented polymath I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve been drawn along a pathway largely due to his influence.”

Winding through the warehouse are rows and rows of shelves containing thousands of art books. They’re organized alphabetically by subject; a random glance takes in large-format tomes about artists including Frida Kahlo, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, René Magritte and Joan Miró.

Walking through the building, which Leissring completely remodeled about eight years ago, is like traversing a maze. The room dividers and shelves are made of bamboo flooring slats; square skylights large and small evoke a painting by Piet Mondrian.

Etchings are displayed so they can be seen up close. But Leissring says only 2 to 3 percent of the 6,000 to 7,000 items in his collection is visible. Thousands of drawings are housed in wide drawers in the warehouse.

Though his art is lovingly displayed, Leissring’s warehouse is not a museum (it’s not open to the public) and it’s not a gallery. But every few months he welcomes visitors for an afternoon viewing because, he said, “Eyes need to see this stuff.”

Some visitors ask him to put up written descriptions next to the artworks, “but I say no,” Leissring said. “That would miss the point of it; either you’re moved by the image or you aren’t.”

Among his most treasured works are paintings and etchings by French cubist Jacques Villon, but Leissring is considering selling his entire collection of Villon’s work, 358 pieces, to help pay the bills. “I’d love to sell it all because I think it belongs together,” he said, adding that the Villon collection is likely worth $1.2 million.

The retired physician, who worked for three decades at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital as laboratory director, reiterated that he doesn’t buy art to deal it.

“I’ve never bought anything for resale. … It puts art in the position of being commoditized. But I have two pieces of real estate, both with mortgages,” he said, which can’t be covered by his Social Security benefits.

As the impromptu warehouse tour continued and midcentury jazz poured through small speakers in every room, Leissring described a table of heads by the sculptor Jerrold Ballaine. His second-floor desk overlooks his collection like the captain’s wheelhouse on a ship.

A mezzotint engraving by Leissring’s grandfather, John Cother Webb, is so precise and realistic that its quality is almost photographic. Near that classic work is a more modern piece, a luridly colored painting called “Wild Dog,” by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo.

“They don’t have to be of a type to hang together,” Leissring said. “They just have to be good.”

Today, Leissring spends most of his days ensconced in his collection. A true Renaissance man, he arrives at the warehouse early in the morning, draws for an hour or more, then plays piano.

He has published dozens of books about artists he admires through his J.C. Leissring Fine Arts Press. When asked where the books are sold, Leissring exclaimed: “Nobody buys them!” and then conceded some can be purchased online as print-on-demand books.

The warehouse is equipped with a kitchen, washer and dryer, making it move-in ready if Leissring needs to — or chooses to — give up the McDonald carriage house.

Asked if he’s been approached by museums or galleries about his collection, Leissring laughed. “Nobody knows about me. I’m not waving my flag. This is just something I had to do, and I did it.”

Learn more about the Jack Leissring Fine Arts Collection by visiting jclfa.com or jclfineart.com.

Phillip Engel bluntly calls the renovation that ate his life “an accident.”

He and spouse Mark Goff were snooping only out of curiosity when they checked out a house for sale near downtown Healdsburg, not long after the economic crash of 2008.

“We weren’t looking to buy. We just wanted to see it,” he said of the dowager at the corner of North and Fitch streets, listed for $1.6 million.

It was a nice address, but the condition of the house was deplorable. What was then known as the Marshall house, built by town blacksmith John Marshall in 1870 as a gift for his bride, was a magnificent wreck, visibly sagging on its chalky foundation.

Power to most of the interior had been shut off in the 1950s, and someone had strung extension cords along the ceiling from the still-functioning electricity in the back of the house. The peeling plaster walls had gouges and gaping holes. An upstairs bathroom was alarmingly cantilevered into empty space, as if, Goff said with a laugh, Marshall’s wife had insisted he not bring it “into the house.” Busted window mullions gave the three-story mansion a tragic-eyed appearance from the street.

“The house,” Goff said with dry understatement, “looked a little sad.”

But he also unexpectedly fell hard for the aging beauty, looking past its flaws to its fabulous bones: old-growth redwood framing with fir and walnut detailing and an interior left largely untouched by a century of the unfortunate remodeling trends that had stripped other old Victorians of their best assets.

Goff and Engel, then living bicoastal between New York and Studio City, Calif., yearned for a quiet, small-town life and kept an eye on the property as two potential sales fell through. Eventually a part of the large lot in back was split off and the price dropped to less than
$1 million, within striking range of their budget. But the house was too dilapidated to qualify for a bank mortgage.

“It was completely unintentional,” Engel said of the couple’s decision to buy the extreme fixer-upper in June 2009, and do most of the work themselves. “The only thing we were looking for in terms of a house is the location, fairly close to downtown.”

Engel and Goff worked out a deal with the seller to carry the mortgage for three years, giving them time to get the house in a condition habitable enough to quality for long-term bank financing. They optimistically thought they could pull it off in less time, but it took exactly three years. They came in just under the wire, working right up until the day before the appraiser arrived.

As soon as the “For Sale” sign came down, Engel and Goff threw an impromptu party in the front yard with sparkling wine, starting what would become an open-porch policy with friends, neighbors and other townsfolk who have watched in fascination as the restoration unfolded.

A month later, they held a “Golden Ticket” gala. Fancy gold-foil invitations similar to the winning tickets to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory were issued to pretty much anyone who showed interest. The bring-your-own flashlight affair was a chance to see the spooky interior before Engel and Goff began stripping it to the studs.

“We should be certified and locked away,” Goff wrote on Sept. 2, 2009, a day before building contractor Jim Glazier had the house lifted from the remains of its foundation. It would be the first post in a blog, 227northstreet.com, which for nearly five years has documented the pair’s fortunes and misfortunes in the restoration.

Goff had some experience in home improvement, having redone a Craftsman bungalow. He and Engel spruced up their midcentury Studio City home. But they had done no remodeling that came even close to a complete restoration of a historic building.

“Other people thought we were out of our minds,” Engel said. They had to figure out everything, from plumbing to electrical wiring. Plastering was particularly onerous.

“It’s the most physically challenging,” Engel explained. “The plaster is heavy and it’s wet and you have a very short window to work with it. You have to keep going. You can’t stop and start or take a break.”

The three-story Italianate home, with its classical face, pillared porch and authentic flickering gaslights out front, is now quite the looker. There’s no part of it, inside or out, that hasn’t been touched in some way. It took until January 2011 for the house to be in good enough condition for Engel and Goff to move in.

The house had been sorely neglected for more than 50 years, after Charles Frampton bought it as an investment in 1955 and sold it to a daughter in the 1970s for $1. A series of tenants occupied the house, though it received little attention in the way of maintenance.

Engel and Goff worked on the house seven days a week and into the night. They didn’t vacation. Each works from home (Goff in graphic design, Engel in high-tech), so when their day jobs ended at 5:30 p.m., they grabbed their tools and began another shift.

In 2013, the couple hired Timothy Hilton of Earth Tone Painting in Healdsburg to give the exterior a face of soft gray with white trim. They also did a lot of exterior trim themselves, including skirting board near the foundation and wooden gutters leading to the decorative wood corner treatments called quoins.

This year they’ll take on the window sashes and exterior paint in back. Inside, it’s down to the fine details, such as trim work, hardware and painting the doors. And then there’s the matter of the third floor, which still remains untouched.

Engel and Goff are circumspect about how much they have spent on the house, partly because they purposely don’t have a budget. They pay for projects as they go, out of their income.

“Everyone asks, are we over budget,” Engel said. “My response has always been, ‘We don’t have a budget.’ Because when you have a budget, you’re over budget. And if you have a schedule, you’re always behind schedule. By not having a schedule or a budget, we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”

The two feel a certain amnesia about the whole thing. Engel figures it must be a little like childbirth.

“If people remembered what it was like to give birth, they might not do it again. Magically, they don’t remember the worst of it,” he mused. “This house, I think, is like that. If we remembered everything up to this point and you asked if I’d do it again, I’d say no. But when I look at it now, I don’t see a time where there were no walls or no floors. It’s strange. Now it’s just seeing this really great house, and we love it.”

The corner of North and Fitch streets has become a bit of a roadside attraction in Healdsburg, with a constant stream of people walking or driving by to offer a thumbs-up or say thanks for saving one of Healdsburg’s architectural heirlooms.

“I tell people I’m very famous within a five-block radius because of the house,” Engel said with a chuckle. “But we realize we don’t actually own this house. We’re just custodians. In many ways, this house belongs to the community.”