About Us
Agrarian Seed and Garden (ASG) is a garden center (formerly Plantique) in the Nokomis East neighborhood of Minneapolis, started by Kierra Hinz, Colty Hinz, and Dusty Hinz.
Our goal is to create a practical garden center that suits the needs and curiosities of casual and serious gardeners alike. We offer a diverse selection of seeds, vegetable plants, herbs, flowers, perennials, tools, and an assortment of other useful gardening products.
Plantique offered a great selection of annual and perennial flowers, which we continue to stock. In addition, we have expanded our vegetable, herb, and native plant offerings. Our forte in the seed world has been our intriguing and diverse vegetables, and we have made ASG a destination for this as well!
OUR TEAM AND EFN BACKGROUND
Our story begins with ASG co-owner Dusty Hinz’s decade of experience in organic farming, seed saving, agroforestry, and activism. Dusty is co-founder of the Experimental Farm Network, a non-profit that facilitates collaborative research and plant breeding (www.ExperimentalFarmNetwork.org), funded by our non-profit seed company (EFNseeds.com) which features small-scale, independent plant breeders and seed savers from across the country. With ASG, we're excited to be able to offer all of EFN's regionally appropriate seeds at a convenient retail location!
Over the past few years, Colty and Kierra have been managing more and more of EFN's seed business, including the labeling, packing, storage, and shipping of seeds (a ton of work!). Kierra and Colty bring a lot to the table. While they are not farmers, their organizational and management skills and experience perfectly complement Dusty's agricultural expertise.
And we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the vital role that one of Dusty’s long-time friends, Eric Blasco, played in the launch of this enterprise. Eric grew up on an organic vegetable farm in western Massachusetts. He worked on other organic farms, developed and implemented a gardening education curriculum for a school in Philadelphia, and for years managed his own edible landscaping business in and around Philadelphia. His dedication to getting ASG started leading up to opening and for the first two years in operation were invaluable!
PHILOSOPHY
At ASG, we are very concerned about climate change and the converging ecological crises that humanity is facing, and we recognize that our way of life will need to change in order to address these grave problems. To this end, we are proponents of a simpler society that prioritizes the radical localization and regionalization of our food system. We want more people to grow more of their own food: from backyard gardeners to full-time farmers. We want ASG to support the health, well-being, and productivity of people who grow food and community in organic and regenerative ways.
We dream of millions more people, especially young people, revitalizing rural farmland, homesteading, building local foodways, adapting plants to their bioregion, and hunkering down for the long haul. However, we realize that this isn’t for everyone, and we're here to meet people where they are. We are advocates of agrarianism, agroecology, and bioregionalism. ASG is a product of these movements and exists to further them in Minnesota and beyond.