Our Story

The Seedbank Child

First Language
Her mother's hands, sorting seeds. Thousands of varieties of heritage food plants and seeds, each one holding instructions for survival that took generations to write. This was Kōanga Institute, where Kay Baxter saved what industrial agriculture wanted to forget.
Some things you learn before you know you're learning them. The quality of dirt under fingernails. The difference between a tomato grown in living soil and one grown in depleted ground. That plants aren't resources but relations. That every taking requires a giving back.
The London Years

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Hunger

Working within Europe’s great food cultures - alongside people whose names you’d recognise, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson, and Kate Moss - she drew on foundations formed in childhood. An early understanding of taste, timing, and care. Of food shaped by land, season, and time.

This chapter refined and deepened what was already present. Fermentation as culture, not trend. Craft sharpened through practice. An expanded understanding of flavour as information, and tradition as living technology.
The Body Said No

Complete System Failure

Back in New Zealand, after reversing an autoimmune condition, she built a fermentation company from nothing - driven by a desire to share what had restored her health. Within 5 years: supermarket shelves, industry awards, a story that looked like success. Then burnout changed everything. Her body stopped participating. Brain fog thick as wool. Exhaustion that sleep couldn’t touch. She tried what the wellness industry offered - synthetic isolates that sat wrong in her gut, powders sweetened with stevia that her mouth refused. The body she’d trained since childhood to recognise real kept saying: no.
Back to the Source

What Her Mother Knew
Kay Baxter was honoured in the 2018 New Year Honours for her work in regenerative agriculture and seed preservation. But the real work had been happening for decades - saving seeds that held knowledge industrial agriculture was trying to erase. Growing up, Amber didn’t realise this wasn’t common knowing. That soil health and human health are the same conversation. That a plant grown with care carries that care into whoever eats it. When sustained stress pushed the body beyond its limits, a return to living systems allowed restoration - an intelligence that had always been there, waiting to be listened to.

Two years in the kitchen. Measuring, mixing, tasting — her own body the only test she trusted.

Super Greens for morning. Super Reds for afternoon. Amber's been drinking them every day since.

Two formulas. Built on one conversation: between soil and gut, between what a plant knows and what your body remembers.

Living Soil

One teaspoon of healthy soil contains more microorganisms than there are people on earth. These microbial communities don't just feed plants—they determine nutrient density, mineral uptake, phytonutrient complexity and flavour. We source from farms that grow in living soil because what's in the ground ends up in you.
The Growers

Ceremonial matcha from Japanese families who shade their plants for three weeks before harvest—raising chlorophyll and L-theanine levels. Rhodiola from high-altitude plateaus where stress concentrates the active compounds. Mushrooms fruited on hardwood, not grain, because the substrate changes the medicine. Sourcing is formulation.
The Approach

Adaptogens are bidirectional—they help regulate systems up or down depending on what's needed. Not a stimulant. Not a sedative. Compounds that support your body's own capacity to recalibrate. Each ingredient chosen for how it interacts with the others, not for label appeal.
Morning

Super Greens. Matcha for sustained focus—L-theanine modulates how caffeine lands. Lion’s Mane to support nerve growth factor. Rhodiola for stress resilience, helping cortisol find its rhythm. A base of young coconut water, mineral-rich sea salt, and lemon to support cellular hydration and natural electrolytes. Pineapple and mint because it should taste like something you want. Morning is when your body is primed to receive.
Afternoon

Super Reds. Beetroot for nitric oxide and blood flow. Pomegranate for mitochondrial function. Cordyceps for oxygen uptake—endurance that doesn’t borrow from tomorrow. A base of young coconut water, mineral-rich sea salt, and lemon to support hydration and natural electrolytes. Raspberry and blackcurrant because flavour is part of how your body decides to absorb what you give it. An alternative to caffeine and sugar.
Full Circle

Living systems nest inside each other—soil, farm, body. What depletes one depletes the others. The farms we work with regenerate soil while they grow, building biology instead of extracting from it. We pay what that actually costs. What enters your body should come from systems that are themselves alive.