Best Gardening and Seed Catalogs for 2026

calendar May 16, 2026 / · 4 min read · gardening catalogs  ·
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Seed and gardening catalogs are one of the oldest forms of direct-to-consumer retail in the United States — and the category remains healthy. The January catalog-browsing ritual for the coming growing season is still very much alive, and for good reason: specialty seed companies carry varieties unavailable at any garden center, and the catalog format lets them provide the germination rates, days-to-maturity, and planting guidance that a seed rack can't.

Here are the gardening and seed catalogs worth having for the 2026 season.

Burpee

Burpee (burpee.com) is the broadest entry point for home gardeners. Founded in 1876, Burpee covers vegetables, herbs, flowers, and bulbs with an emphasis on varieties bred for home-garden performance — disease resistance, extended harvest windows, and compact plant habits suited to smaller plots. The catalog is heavily illustrated and includes detailed growing guides that are genuinely useful for newer gardeners.

Burpee develops and introduces proprietary varieties each year, including their well-known Beefsteak tomato, Early Girl descendants, and several AAS (All-America Selections) winners. The seed quality is consistently high. Prices run slightly higher than no-name seed packets, but germination rates justify the premium. Burpee also carries transplants, bare-root strawberries, and asparagus crowns seasonally.

Johnny's Selected Seeds

Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com) is the catalog for serious home gardeners and small-scale market farmers. Founded in 1973 in Maine and employee-owned, Johnny's has a reputation for rigorous variety trialing — every variety in the catalog has been grown and evaluated at their Maine farm and at trial sites across the country. If a variety underperforms, it gets cut.

The catalog depth in vegetables is exceptional. Johnny's carries multiple varieties of every major crop, with detailed comparison charts covering days to maturity, disease resistance, yield, flavor profiles, and recommended uses (fresh market vs. processing vs. storage). This is the catalog to use when you want to make an informed decision between, say, five different summer squash varieties for your specific growing conditions.

Johnny's is also the go-to for market growers: they carry transplant cell trays, row cover fabric, soil blockers, and other production-scale tools alongside seeds. If you're growing more than a backyard plot, Johnny's catalog has everything needed to scale.

Seed Savers Exchange

Seed Savers Exchange (seedsaversexchange.org) serves a different purpose than the commercial seed catalogs. Based in Decorah, Iowa, Seed Savers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving heirloom vegetable and fruit varieties — many of which would otherwise be lost as commercial agriculture narrowed to high-yield hybrids.

The Seed Savers catalog lists open-pollinated heirloom varieties with documented histories — tomatoes from the 1800s, beans carried by immigrant families, corn varieties tied to specific Native American agricultural traditions. If you save seed from year to year, Seed Savers is the right catalog: heirloom open-pollinated varieties breed true, unlike F1 hybrids. Flavor is often the trade-off for modern disease resistance, but many gardeners consider heirloom tomato flavor worth the extra attention required.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Baker Creek (rareseeds.com) overlaps with Seed Savers Exchange in heirloom focus but runs a for-profit operation with a broader international catalog — they import heirloom varieties from across Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Americas. The Baker Creek catalog is notably diverse: unusual squash varieties, Asian greens, ancient grain varieties, and dozens of tomato types unavailable elsewhere.

Baker Creek's catalog production value is high — it reads more like a gardening magazine than a seed listing, with photography and variety backstories throughout. Worth requesting even if you don't buy immediately; it's good reading during the planning season.

Territorial Seed Company

Territorial Seed (territorialseed.com) is regionally focused on the Pacific Northwest but ships nationally. Their specialty is varieties selected for cool, wet growing conditions — which means they carry options that work in the maritime Northwest, the Northeast, and higher-altitude mountain gardens where summer is short. If you're gardening in a challenging climate, Territorial's variety notes are written with your conditions explicitly in mind.

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