By the numbers, the Millennium Seed Bank holds over 2 billion seeds from over 40,000 species, collected by scientists and volunteers from 279 organizations spanning over 100 countries.

It's likely the largest seed vault on Earth, with the other contender being located on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

Located at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew facility in Wakehurst, seeds from all over the world are carefully cleaned, dried, and stored in walk-in freezers at -20°C, or about -4°F. For 25 years, the work has been carried out by experts who have developed the skills not only to store the seeds, but also to wake them up again, often using bespoke protocols for seed germination.

Rare news stories occasionally flash across the airwaves about seeds hundreds, even thousands of years old, remaining alive long enough to germinate. The MSB experts believe that for every 1% of moisture extracted from a seed, and for every 9 degrees of additional cold, the lifespan of a seed approximately doubles.

"Within species there is incredible genetic diversity, which protects against disease, climate change and other threats," Dale Sanders, biologist and former director of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, told AP. "Maintaining that diversity is essential if we want to preserve the diversity of life itself."

For all the archiving and record keeping and preservation, the MSB is hardly just a storehouse. To the contrary, it's always growing something: funds for ecosystem restoration or botanical research, young scientists looking to begin a career in plant conservation, or plans to restore existing ecosystems by leveraging the vault's vast reserves.

This year is the MSB's 25th anniversary, and in honor of its important mission and the impressive accomplishments it's already racked up, it's launching an ambitious fundraising goal of £30 million to help fund the Millennium Seed Bank's work for decades to come.

To tell the story of it's journey thus far, the project has enlisted the help of renowned Australian film and theater star Cate Blanchett, who knows a few things about old trees in her portrayal of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. 

Blanchett and members of Kew and the MSB are sharing the stories of the last 25 years of work through a podcast series called Unearthed: The Need for Seed, the first two episodes of which is already available through Apple and Spotify.