Seeds for the home gardener.

Pinetree Garden Seeds is a family mail-order seed company in New Gloucester, Maine, a town in Cumberland County north of Portland. Its website calls it “a family owned and operated business since 1979,” founded “with the simple mission of offering low prices on quality seeds to the home gardener.” Its earliest archived home page, from December 1998, put the idea a little differently: Pinetree “was begun in 1979 to provide home gardeners with seeds in appropriate sized packages.”

Its founder was Richard “Dick” Meiners. The company says he began Pinetree “in the attic of his home in the 1970s,” and that “it all started with a one-page mail order catalog, and a simple idea to provide cost-effective seeds to the home gardener.” The business, it says, grew under his guidance for 30 years.

The company describes its base today as a 300-year-old farmhouse in rural Maine, from which it says it tries to offer service “with a personal touch.” It sells by mail and online, and still sends out a printed catalogue on request.

From flyer to catalogue.

The 1998 home page charted the growth from that start. “From this one page flyer we have grown to a 168 page catalog,” it said, covering bulbs, plants, tools and gardening books as well as 800 varieties of vegetable, flower and herb seeds. “However, our focus remains the home gardener and their needs.” The site sorted vegetables by cuisine as well as by name, with sections for French, Italian, Latin American and Native American vegetables, alongside cover crops, sprouting seeds and mushrooms.

The range has grown since. The website now lists more than 1,300 varieties of seed, “including many Heirlooms & Organics,” together with tools and gardening gear, books and live plants; its 2026 menus also cover fall flower bulbs and garlic. Archived pages show that in 2014 Pinetree also sold soap-making and crafting supplies, and its welcome note that year marked the company’s 35th year, promising “several changes to our catalog” and a new, “more intuitive website” with easier navigation and checkout. Its website still offers the catalogue as a PDF, with a printable order form.

Its seed policy is stated plainly. Pinetree says it “has never sold any genetically modified seeds” and has signed the Safe Seed Pledge, under which signers say they do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants. The same statement appeared on its about page in archived copies from 2013, and the company says it also supports local efforts to label genetically modified foods and keeps a wide selection of heirloom seeds.

The founder’s view is quoted in its FAQ. “We sell no seed that has been developed using genetic manipulation,” Richard Meiners has said, according to the company, adding: “We do not view technologies as being good or bad things in themselves, but people can certainly employ them in pernicious ways.” The same page says Pinetree does not carry or sell any treated seed — seed coated with a fungicide or other ingredient to protect it before germination — and, answering customers who had asked about larger corporations buying small seed companies, says that “after 40 years, Pinetree remains a small family owned business.”

Seed houses and their catalogues.

The seven brands in this group are all garden seed houses: Stokes Seeds, Jung Seed, Richters, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Premier Seeds Direct, Eden Brothers and Harris Seeds. Seed houses in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to catalogue names that now belong to larger groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a garden centre rack to a grower’s order book.

A seed brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single packet than by a name, a catalogue and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its trial grounds or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its seed is actually grown, tested and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its seed comes from and how its packets and catalogues have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A second-generation owner.

The business passed to a second generation in 2011. Pinetree says that year it “was passed down from its founder, Dick Meiners, to his stepdaughter Melissa,” and that she and her family are continuing its mission of “supporting the home gardener by offering affordable, high quality seeds and goods.” Her 2026 welcome letter, signed as “the second generation owner” and written from New Gloucester, says Pinetree has spent “over 40 years” “feeding families, friends, and neighbors.”

It also works locally. The Maine School Garden Network says Pinetree has supported it since 2020 and named the company its Sponsor of the Month for March 2026. Pinetree’s own philanthropy page says it shares thousands of seeds with community groups near New Gloucester, among them MOFGA, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association; St. Mary’s Nutrition Center; the Androscoggin and Auburn co-ops; and local schools.

Its working arrangements are described on the same site. The FAQ says a small team hand-picks orders and ships them from the farmhouse by USPS or UPS, and that items marked sold out may still be “on its way to us from a grower.” Orders can also be sent by mail, using the printable form, and the company says customers who order by mail receive a refund or credit for anything sold out.

For a design guide, Pinetree shows how a mail-order seed house can build its identity around the home gardener and plain value rather than heritage alone. Compare Baker Creek, another family heirloom seed house, and Jung Seed, a family mail-order seed company in Wisconsin. For this guide we use a pine green and a kraft brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pinetree Garden Seeds’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.