The Bean Man Behind Our Fall Cover

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Unearth the beautiful preservation backstory behind this issue’s stunning bean cover stars.​

COVER PHOTO SARA FRIEDL-PUTNAM
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS NICK WALLIN, SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE

Our Fall 2026 Northern Gardener cover shot is more than a bowl of beans. There’s actually a childhood craving, 1,186 varieties and a remarkable legacy hiding in that beautiful wooden dish.

Those beautifully rich maroons, inky purples and honey-brown bean freckles on our fall cover deserve a second look. The photograph, also featured in Seed Savers Exchange’s catalog story about John Withee, opens a window into a remarkable collection: more than a thousand varieties of beans brought together by a man who wanted to taste his childhood again.

From weekly dinners to yearly preservation​

An adventurer and medical photographer, John was known as the “Bean Man.” In the late 1960s, he began searching for the colorful, flavorful heirloom beans he remembered eating in rural Maine. Fond memories of a tasty dinner kicked off an extraordinary preservation project.

John knew his beans. As a boy, he helped prepare his family’s Saturday supper by tending a “bean hole,” an outdoor pit in which a Dutch oven of beans cooked underground. Leftovers stretched into Sunday meals and school lunch sandwiches with mayonnaise. He embraced a lifelong relationship with the legume.

By 1975, John had collected more than 200 varieties. When he retired from leading a Boston hospital’s photo laboratory the following year, he launched Wanigan Associates, a nonprofit devoted to collecting, growing and distributing heirloom bean seeds. Gardeners, seed savers, breeders and other enthusiasts contributed. Eventually, his collection drew from more than 200 seed sources and roughly 20 commercial seed companies.

He started wrestling with a question most devoted collectors eventually face: Who will care for all this when I can’t?

Inspiration for a seed saving movement​

In 1981, at John’s request, Seed Savers Exchange took on his collection of 1,186 varieties. SSE’s catalog describes that handoff as a catalyst for its development into the country’s largest nongovernmental seed bank. The Bean Man’s appetite for nostalgic favorites helped shape a national institution.

To thank John, SSE’s founders commissioned a fitting thank-you gift: a wooden display case that opened like a book revealing 800 varieties arranged in small compartments behind glass. Imagine opening a suitcase and finding hundreds of tiny, beautifully patterned beans. We hope our fall cover photo offers a taste of that same joy and an invitation to notice how much variety a familiar crop can hold.

John’s staggering collection encompassed common beans, cowpeas, limas, runner beans and tepary beans adapted to arid conditions. That diversity carries on the many tastes, preferences and growing traditions of generations of countless gardeners. Every seed represents a plant someone deemed worthy of planting again. John understood that a collection this rich needed more hands and a future beyond his own garden. The growers who contributed, and the people who took responsibility afterward, made that future possible.

Growing and saving your own winter beans​

Here’s a small experiment for next season: choose one heirloom bean that can mature in your growing season. Find out where it came from. Grow it, taste it and record what you love about it. If you save seed, keep fully mature, thoroughly dried beans, labeled with the variety and year. When you share them, don’t forget to include the story, too.

A few beans in an envelope can carry a surprisingly large inheritance. Turns out a craving for memorable dinner can leave quite a legacy.


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