why local/organic

Flowers are living things and they are a commodity shipped around the world. Consider the fuel cost and resources used to keep lovely, fragile flowers protected and alive en route from, say, Tanzania to Tennessee. In order to ensure safe transport, cosmetic perfection and long vase life, growers attack flowers with toxic chemicals (imagine rose blossoms dipped in fungicide). Since flowers aren’t food (most of the time), the industry is allowed to use much harsher chemicals (both in the United States, and even more especially abroad) than produce farmers can. This means that the production of flowers spreads nasty chemicals on a global scale. Rivers and lakes are poisoned, field workers get sick. As a bumper sticker I once saw says: “pesticides don’t know when to stop killing.”

At Marigold and Mint, we strive through our organic and sustainable agricultural practices to do no harm to the environment and all the people and animals that live in it, and to balance any harm (such as some reliance on fossil fuels) with a healthy serving of good: by growing and selling natural fragrant flowers within the Northwest. We work hard to build soil fertility, create habitat, and protect genetic diversity by growing countless varieties of flowers.

Our blooming fields hum with life: bees swarm the marigolds; rosy finches, sparrows and wrens make themselves at home; tree frogs cling to the stalks of cosmos. Our kids run freely down the paths between the beds, and we don’t have to worry that they are brushing up against chemical residue.