An organic seed company from the high desert.

Seeds of Change began in New Mexico in 1989. The Deseret News, in a November 2004 garden column written with Bob Quick of The Santa Fe New Mexican, said the company was founded that year by Gabriel Howearth and Kenny Ausubel, and noted that neither founder was by then involved with it. English Wikipedia, citing The Albuquerque Tribune in October 2001, says its research farm was also started in 1989, by Howearth, in Gila, in the south-west of the state.

The business soon settled further north. The same 2004 column described it as based in Santa Fe, with its research farm north of Española near the village of El Guique, on the Rio Grande. Wikipedia says the farm had moved there by 1996 to be closer to the Santa Fe offices, and that it grew a large collection of plant varieties on land the Tewa people had farmed before.

The people around the company changed in the mid-1990s. The Deseret News reported that in 1995 a group of farmers led by Howard-Yana Shapiro took the company over. English Wikipedia’s article on Shapiro, citing the San Jose weekly Metroactive in 1996, says he had become an investor in 1992 and the company’s director of agriculture in 1995.

From the start the product was organic seed for gardeners. In 2004 the column described a mail-order catalogue of flower, vegetable and herb seed, with recent introductions that included a Bull’s Blood beet and an Iceland poppy. The company was by then reaching beyond the garden: Marketing Week reported in April 1999 that it had begun by selling organic seed through mail order, and listed a US food range of organic pasta, pasta sauces, rice and grain blends, soups, salsa and salad dressings.

How the name moved between owners.

Mars has owned Seeds of Change since 1997. The Deseret News gave that year for the purchase by the privately held confectioner from McLean, Virginia, and Marketing Week reported in April 1999 that Stephen Badger, a son of Jackie Mars and grandson of Forrest Mars Sr, had been the company’s president since the acquisition. The same Marketing Week report covered the brand’s arrival in British supermarkets that year, with pasta sauces and dried pasta as the first products, and presented the deal as part of Mars’s move into foods beyond chocolate.

Shapiro stayed on inside the larger company. English Wikipedia, citing The Guardian in 2009, says he became a senior scientist in plant science at Mars, a research manager for plant science in 2000 and its global director of plant science and external research in 2005.

New Mexico was later left behind. English Wikipedia, citing the Albuquerque Journal of 14 August 2010, says Mars announced that month that it would close the El Guique farm and move some management to Los Angeles, with a final public tour on 14 August; a Mars spokesperson called it a “strategic shift”. Wikipedia gives Santa Fe as the company’s base until summer 2010.

The seed side was then separated from the food side. In a news item dated 17 June 2020, the private-equity firm Freeman Spogli said its portfolio company Plantation Products, of Norton, Massachusetts, had closed the purchase of Sustainable Agrico, which included the gardening seeds business of Seeds of Change, a division of Mars, and had signed a long-term licence agreement with Seeds of Change. Plantation’s other brands included Ferry-Morse, Livingston Seed and Jiffy.

That business changed hands again within a year. In a release dated 16 February 2021 and filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Central Garden & Pet said it had closed its acquisition of Green Garden Products, formerly known as Plantation Products, from Freeman Spogli, and listed Seeds of Change among Green Garden’s brands. The brand’s own website still carries a Mars copyright line and calls Seeds of Change an affiliate of Mars, Incorporated.

One name on two shelves.

The seven brands in this group are all garden seed names: D.T. Brown, Moles Seeds, Franchi, De Bolster, Veseys, Seeds of Change and True Leaf Market. Seed companies in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to larger horticultural groups, and a single name can reach gardeners through a printed catalogue, a garden-centre rack or a website.

A seed brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a packet, a catalogue and a name, because the company behind it may have changed hands, moved premises or changed where its seed is grown and packed. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its seed is grown, cleaned 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 have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Seed packet and grocery pouch under one name.

Today the name works across two very different products. The Seeds of Change website, run by Mars, sorts its range into organic rice and grains, protein bowls and seeds, and its home page pairs ready-to-heat food with the idea that the best meals use fresh ingredients from the buyer’s own garden. The brand name is set in capital letters with a trademark sign throughout the site’s copy.

The seed range is presented in the company’s own words. Its seeds page says that all Seeds of Change seeds are certified organic and non-GMO, describes them as non-neonic, and groups them as vegetables, herbs and spices, flowers and collections. The site says the seeds are available where garden seeds are sold, rather than through the mail-order catalogue described in 2004.

The packet itself carries part of the message. The brand’s FAQ page says the back of its seed packets includes a map of the United States with recommended planting times for different regions, and that its seeds are developed through natural selection and breeding. The same FAQ explains organic gardening in plain terms for beginners.

For a design guide, Seeds of Change shows how one name can live on a seed packet and a grocery pouch at once, even when two different companies stand behind those two products, with the organic promise and a garden-to-table story carried on both. Compare Dolmio, another Mars food brand, and De Bolster, an organic seed house in this group. For this guide we use field green, seed cream and a squash-orange accent with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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