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and Washington, Warren and Saratoga counties.

Photo: Through Seeds for Peace, Susan Johnson collects seeds and garden tools and ships
them to countries, like Bosnia, where war or weather have made life difficult.

Somewhere in the warbattered country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a young woman smiles as
she hauls a big bag of onions from her garden. In another village, an old woman stirs a spicy relish of homegrown red peppers and eggplant on a wood-fired stove. This summer, hundreds of Bosnians will be harvesting cabbages, potatoes and carrots and a cornucopia of other succulent vegetables — all grown with seeds from Saratoga Springs.

Seeds for Peace, a one-woman organization run by Susan Johnson of Saratoga Springs, collects seeds and garden tools and ships them to the American Friends Service Committee in Sarajevo, the capital of the southern European country. AFSC then distributes them to people in its Community Gardens project, who grow food for their families and for sale in the marketplace. Young and old, children and grandparents, the gardeners come from different ethnic backgrounds, and work side by side in a safe, supportive environment.

“Welcome to the seed warehouse,” says Johnson, as she warmly ushers a visitor into her apartment near Lake Avenue. On the floor, 100-pound sacks of bulk seed are positioned here and there in her minimuseum home, with its science books, fish aquarium, animal and plant posters and photos of scenic places from around the world.

An outdoor adventurer, triathlete and traveler, Johnson sets down a tray of homemade English muffins, then jumps up from the couch and grabs some weird, coral-like rocks that were sent to her from a pen pal in Morocco. “They are a billion years old…from the Sahara Desert,” she says with excitement. But Seeds of Peace, launched in 2003, is her cherished show-and-tell project. Johnson is a fitness instructor and personal trainer at
the YMCA, and she runs Saratoga Garden Designs, a one-woman garden planning and maintenance business. She’s also known as “The Seed Lady,” appearing at church meetings, rotary clubs and in classrooms to ask for help to send seeds to Bosnia and other places where war or weather have made life difficult and nutritious food scarce. Seeds for Peace gardens are also sprouting in Ukraine, Guatemala, Uganda, Tanzania and in Waveland, Mississippi, which is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

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