Heirloom Plants is an exhibition at the Academy of Natural Sciences celebrating community gardens and farms throughout the city, where plants, cultural heritage, and community science intersect. 

In neighborhoods across Philadelphia, communities from the Philippines, Burma, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and the African Diaspora steward gardens and farms filled with ancestral plants. Generations of people experiencing displacement due to forced migration, slavery, and global conflict transported these culturally important seeds to areas far from their homelands. At Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden, Novick Urban Farm, Villa Africana Colobó, Bahay 215, VietLead and Resilient Roots Farm they preserve enduring legacies of traditional knowledge, rituals, and foodways.

At the Academy these five community farms gathered to archive twenty-five of their heirloom plants in the Academy's Botany Herbarium alongside ancestral stories and recipes from seed keepers and gardeners who see Philadelphia as a place to make home.The temporary exhibition and associated programs, developed in partnership with True Love Seeds, highlight five culturally important plants from the collection, alongside their histories and interrelationships, describing how ethnobotanical practices help to advance science and expand our understanding of the natural world and ourselves.