Most Seed Sold Here Wasn't Grown Here. Six Suppliers Who Do It Differently.
New Zealand's largest certified organic seed supplier says about 10% of its range is grown here. So where does the rest come from, and who is actually growing seed in this country? Six suppliers, and what each will tell you.
Kings Seeds holds BioGro certification and has the largest certified organic seed range in New Zealand, though it says around 10% of its range is produced here. Setha's Seeds and KÅanga grow everything they sell in this country without certification. Ecoseeds holds Organic Farm NZ certification for its own gardens. Sentinels Group sells direct from the grower, and a Whanganui trust posts seed out free.
September is when the seed racks fill up and everybody starts thinking about the garden. I went looking for organic seed and found a question I hadn't expected to be interesting: where was any of this actually grown?
New Zealand is very good at growing seed. Te Puni KÅkiri's land use fact sheet on vegetable seeds says vegetable seed is the country's third-biggest vegetable export crop. Around 75% of it is grown in Canterbury, with the rest mostly around Pukekohe. New Zealand is the largest carrot seed producer in the southern hemisphere. The most recent export figure the fact sheet gives is for 2018, when vegetable seed earned $94.2 million, of which carrot seed was $30 million and radish seed $25.1 million.
None of that is the packet on the rack.
Kings Seeds is the largest supplier of certified organic seed in the country by its own account. Its homepage says around 10% of its range is produced right here in New Zealand. That leaves about nine packets in ten grown somewhere else.
The trade has said much the same about the commercial side for a long time. In 2016 Mark Johnson, then chairman of the vegetable seed section of the New Zealand Grain and Seed Trade Association, told Stuff the country was highly dependent on imported overseas genetics for vegetables, and that virtually all seed for vegetable growing apart from onions and pumpkins was imported. That quote is a decade old. The association now trades as Seed and Grain New Zealand, and I could not find a current figure for seed imports to sit beside it.
So we grow seed for the world, and buy most of our garden seed back from it.
Here is the thing worth saying up front, because it took me a while to get straight in my own head. Imported certified organic seed is still certified organic seed. The crop it came off was audited. There is nothing wrong with buying it. Where a seed was grown is a second question, and a good one, but it is a different question from whether it was grown organically. Why people choose organic in the first place is a third question again.
So this is really two lists in one. Who is certified, and who grows it here. The same split turns up in flour, where a New Zealand grown mark and an organic certificate buy you different things.
Kings Seeds, Katikati
Certified with BioGro NZ, the certifier that traces back to a gardening club founded in 1941. Its wholesale page publishes both an input certificate and a compliance certificate as downloadable documents, which is more than most suppliers offer.
The organic lines are tagged "certified-organic" on every product listing, so you can tell what you are buying without asking. The range covers the ordinary vegetables rather than only the unusual ones. Organic Beetroot Detroit Dark Red, Organic Carrot Berlicum, Organic Spring Onion Tokyo Long White, Organic Zucchini Black Beauty, Organic Basil Sweet Genovese, Organic Dill, Organic Rocket. The whole sprouting range is BioGro certified and tested for foodborne pathogens.
Some lines are both. Organic Corn Early Gem is tagged certified-organic and NZ-Grown on the same listing. That is the overlap you want if you can find it.
One sentence on their wholesale page explains most of the market in one go. They say the majority of their seed is untreated, and that untreated seed can be accepted for organic certification so long as there is no suitable organic alternative. That is the rule certified growers work under. When organic seed of a variety does not exist, they may plant untreated conventional seed and stay certified.
Setha's Seeds, TÅ«tira
Roddy Branagan and Setha Davenport, founded 2013, based in Hawke's Bay. They grow every seed in their catalogue themselves. They name this as the distinction between them and seed companies who buy in most of their seed from the multinational seed market.
They are not certified. They publish an organic declaration instead, and it is specific. No herbicides, insecticides or fungicides. Compost made on site from their own garden refuse and organic animal manures. Cover cropping for soil building. All equipment on the property owned by them. All seeds GMO free. No seed treated. Certified organic potting mix in the nursery.
Then the line that matters most. If you require a signed copy of that declaration for your organic certifier, get in touch.
Their catalogue is coded so you can see what you are getting: NZH for New Zealand heritage, OP for open pollinated, OH for overseas heritage grown out here. Most of the range is NZH. They run a sliding scale pricing system and publish a biodynamic sowing calendar.
KÅanga, near Wairoa
A not-for-profit charity holding what it describes as New Zealand's largest heritage seed bank and food plant collection. Over 95% of the collection is New Zealand heritage seed. All open pollinated, no hybrids. Keeping old varieties going is slow work, and two people in Riverton doing it with apples give you some idea of the scale.
Their position on certification is worth quoting closely because it is unusually careful. Their seeds are grown according to organic standards and beyond organic standards, although not organically certified. No inputs that fail organic standards. No genetic modification. No fungicide seed treatment, which they contrast with imported seed. And, as with Setha's, they can provide suitable documentation for certified organic growers who grow their seeds or plants.
Their seeds page says most of the growing happens in Hawke's Bay, with a few lines in Northland and some of the carbon crops grown by certified organic growers in the South Island.
Their site also says they can find only one other very small seed business in this country growing more than a handful of seed here. I do not think that holds. Setha's grows every line in its catalogue. Sentinels Group is a collective of growers. Ecoseeds grows certified lines in its own gardens. That is three, and I was not looking hard.
KÅanga is near Wairoa but the site is not open to the public and there is no shop there. Everything goes through their online store, and their seed is also stocked by retailers around the country.
What's special about KÅanga seeds
Ecoseeds, Hautere
A small operation at 9 Harper Road, Hautere, near Åtaki, run by Dave Treadwell, supplying seed since 1993. The gardens hold Organic Farm NZ certification, number 1135. Open pollinated or non-hybrid only, no chemical coatings.
Their 2026 seed list runs to 110 lines by my count: 76 vegetables, 21 herbs, 10 flowers, 3 fruit. Pukekohe Long Keeper onion, Whangaparaoa Crown pumpkin, Kumikumi squash and New Zealand spinach sit alongside the European standards.
Something changed between their older catalogue and the current list, and it is worth knowing about. The older catalogue marks certification variety by variety. Sixteen entries carry "OFNZ Certified 1135" beside them and the rest do not. It also says supply of certified organic seed is limited, and that they source from suppliers who confirm the seed is free of genetic engineering and chemical applications, and from non-certified organic growers.
The 2026 list carries no per-line marking. It states certified organic seed production under OFNZ 1135 at the top and supplier of certified organic New Zealand grown seed at the bottom, and leaves it there. So the order form alone will not tell you which lines are certified.
Their website does still say the certified seeds are identified on the site, in the catalogue and on the packs. Between the two documents, the marking exists, it just isn't on the order form. If you are buying for a certified garden, ask which lines are covered.
One thing to know before you click. Their website is well out of date. It still gives a Wellington address and says the business is celebrating 25 years. The 2026 seed list is the current document and puts them at Hautere.
Sentinels Group
Not a company. A collective of New Zealand hobby gardeners and horticulturalists selling hand harvested seed direct from the person who grew it.
Some heirlooms, some new landrace and grex crosses bred by members for New Zealand conditions. Recycled packaging and hand written seed packets, and they warn you that hand harvested seed may arrive with a bit of detritus in it. Some of their varieties are pledged open source through the Open Source Seed Initiative, meaning you can do what you like with them provided you do not patent them or stop anyone else using them.
They make no certification claim. They are openly recruiting more growers.
Heritage Food Crops Research Trust, Whanganui
Not a seed company at all, and the only entry here that will send you seed for the price of a stamp.
The trust researches the health compounds in heritage food varieties, and has commissioned organisations including Plant and Food Research, a Crown Research Institute, to do the testing. Their best known result is Monty's Surprise, a heritage apple they say carries high levels of phytonutrients which, in cell culture testing, suppressed the proliferation of cancer cells. Worth reading that carefully. Cell culture testing is a long way from a demonstrated benefit in people, and the trust does not claim otherwise.
Their other line of work is tomatoes. They say some heritage golden and orange varieties contain a form of lycopene the body absorbs easily from raw fruit, where modern red tomatoes need cooking first.
Alongside apples and tomatoes they hold beans, carrot, wheat, kūmara, kale, plums, prunes, pears, peaches and feijoas. Seed goes into a seed bank. Growing happens at their Whanganui base, which has greenhouses, a nursery and an orchard, and they say they use organic gardening techniques. No certification claim.
The distribution is the part gardeners will care about. Send them a stamped self-addressed envelope and they will send golden or orange tomato seed. Send a stamped self-addressed bubble bag and they will send climbing beans. They have given away thousands of Monty's Surprise trees and tomato plants free around Whanganui. Bare-rooted trees are collection only and winter only.
If you would rather not post an envelope, Kings Seeds runs a dedicated Heritage Food Crops Trust collection, so some of these varieties are already in ordinary retail.
Heritage Food Crops Research Trust
Mr Fothergill's, and one that says organic without saying who checked
Mr Fothergill's sells an organic seed range in New Zealand, seventeen products as of 6 September 2026, all at $6.65. Six were sold out when I looked.
Their organic page says the seeds have been produced naturally and are free from any sort of genetic modification. It does not name a certifier. Not BioGro, not AsureQuality, not Organic Farm NZ, not Demeter, not an overseas body. I checked the collection page twice. A certifier may appear on the individual product pages or on the packet, and if you are in a garden centre it is worth turning one over to see.
That absence is the whole point of the exercise. Six suppliers here will tell you exactly what they are certified to, or exactly why they are not. One says organic and stops.
What I would do
If you want certification and a wide range, Kings Seeds, and check the tag on each packet.
If you want seed grown in this country, Setha's or KÅanga, and accept a declaration in place of a certificate. Both will give you documentation if your certifier needs it.
If you want the unusual stuff and do not mind a hand written packet, Sentinels Group.
If you want to spend nothing, put a stamped envelope in the post to Whanganui.
If you want both certification and New Zealand growing in one purchase, Ecoseeds is closest, and Kings Seeds has a small number of lines tagged both ways.
Several of these suppliers also sell through independent shops, so if you would rather buy in person, the map has the shops and growers on it.
The seed racks will be full by the end of the month. Most of what is on them came a very long way to get there.
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