PLANT Design Studio Creates Organic Spice & Herb Kits for Eco-Conscious Foodies

As people who love good food just as much as we love good design, we are going gaga over the products coming out of <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/" target="_blank">PLANT Design Studio</a> in Brooklyn, made up of husband and wife team, Bjarke Ballisager and Holly McWhorter. The duo has created a line of socially responsible kitchen kits and accessories for the sustainably-minded foodie, including an <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/?page_id=4&amp;shopp_pid=9" target="_blank">organic spice kit</a> and an <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/?page_id=4&amp;shopp_pid=6" target="_blank">organic seed kit</a> to grow your own herbs.

PLANT's best selling-product is the <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/?page_id=4&amp;shopp_pid=9" target="_blank">Mobile Foodie Survival Kit</a>. Holly came up with the idea a few years back when she was brainstorming designs that she could use while traveling. Realizing that the food in many travel pit stops -- airports, train stations, bus stops -- is one of the worst parts of traveling, she concocted the first spice kit. <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/?page_id=4&amp;shopp_pid=9" target="_blank">The kit</a> comes with 13 ground organic spices and wasabi powder, so you have everything you need to make your food taste a little bit better. The stacked plastic packaging is completely recyclable, and it is long-lasting, so you can refill the containers again and again.

Most of the spices come from <a href="http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/" target="_blank">Mountain Rose Herbs</a>, an organic spice company in Portland, Oregon. The first mobile spice kit came in a tin (shown above), but PLANT redesigned it to give it a stronger, more convenient package.

For those who want fresh spices, <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/" target="_blank">PLANT</a> created the <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/?page_id=4&amp;shopp_pid=6" target="_blank">Herb Seed Kit</a>. Intended to encourage people to grow their own food no matter where they live, the kit comes with seeds for ten different organic herbs, with each packet containing approximately 100 seeds each.

The kit also includes compostable garden markets, and instruction cards for each herb, detailing how to plant, care for, and harvest them. PLANT hopes to roll out a wildflower seed kit soon. One satisfied customer sent PLANT this picture of her herbs growing on her rooftop.

All of PLANT's kits are assembled upstate in Poughkeepsie, New York by a team of adults with physical and medical handicaps at the <a href="http://www.midhudsonworkshop.org/">Mid-Hudson Workshop for the Disabled</a>. Even as PLANT's business grows, and we don't doubt that it will, they plan to keep production at the workshop. In addition to the kits, PLANT makes a clever cheese board, appropriately shaped like a piece of Swiss cheese. The non-porous board won't harbor bacteria or odors, and they are made in local fabrication shops.

PLANT also designed handmade <a href="http://plantbrooklyn.com/?page_id=4&amp;shopp_pid=7" target="_blank">letter openers</a> made from recycled paper pulp and reclaimed wood.