Welcome to our microfarm. We take great pride in having our own microfarm right at Botnia HQ, and we think it’s a big part of what makes us special.

We wanted to learn what science has to say about plants and their medicinal powers, so we brought an expert onto our team: a Stanford-trained plant biologist, helped ensure that each product and service we offer uses plants to their nutritional maximum. Our founder, Justine, worked in the treatment room with each of our botanicals for years, poring over the results she saw and developing our skincare line through client feedback and direct experience.

We think about every aspect of the product creation process and go to great lengths with every bottle that ships out of our lab, starting with organic soil and seed quality through growing to harvest, drying, and finally processing each botanical in our own lab. Our farm follows the natural cycle of our climate and we employ water catchment and eco-farming practices. Our farm is protected from any pesticides and our pest control consists of neem, ladybugs, and our farm cat Shadow.

Clean skincare comes from healthy dirt. Plants are only as strong as the soil they grow in–ours is organic soil, fertilized with homemade compost mainly of leaves and vegetable scraps into a rich soil amendment that keeps our plants thriving from the moment they are planted to the time we harvest them. It would cost a lot less money and take a lot less time to skip these steps, but that would sacrifice the quality of our skincare, so we happily stick to our process.

But you can trust us to source the best. In Sausalito’s sunny Mediterranean climate, not every botanical we use can thrive, so when we need a botanical we can’t grow (like arnica, which grows at higher elevations) we look for the same organic farming practices we use on our farm and use our local communities of Marin and Sonoma as a first resource. We don’t have enough land to grow everything we need, so we rely on farmers who produce plants of the highest quality to supplement our homegrown botanicals.

We only partner with organic farms and trusted laboratories, and our goal is to develop relationships with every ingredient, farmer, and scientist. By sourcing single ingredients and carefully hand-crafting products in our lab, we keep the supply chain simple and transparent (and less reliant on fossil fuels to transport faraway ingredients).

We make our products by hand in small batches. While the color or smell may vary with organic skincare you can trust that we have seen the process from start to finish, making sure the products meet our strict standards all along the way. Our botanicals are always organic heirloom medicinal quality, and we have gotten truly nerdy about micro aspects like seed sourcing and plant varieties. When we wild harvest we look for areas of abundance and never overharvest.

We make our own hydrosols and extracts with our plants to ensure that the raw ingredients we use in our skincare come to your face fresh and ready to heal, nourish, and ultimately contribute to your overall health and well-being. Our botanicals are first chosen for their skin-healing properties, then nurtured through judicious use of compost and watering, and ultimately hand-harvested to go right into our skincare formulations. Most of the plants in our skincare grow right outside our lab door. Every day we check in on their health and we harvest when the timing’s just right. Our plants head straight into our skincare with no processing, delay, or transportation, ultimately ensuring their freshness and potency.

Botnia works hand in hand with Bay Area garden experts, from Peter Rudnick of Green Gulch to author of Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate Wendy Johnson, our farming consultant Green Gardens, and of course our master composter David Williams. Our stellar garden team helped us plan, build, grow, and maintain our microfarm, and we rely on their experience as our farm grows and evolves. These plant experts and farmers pour their expertise into each botanical we grow.

Yes, we care about our bodies and we also care about the environment. Our intention is to be a low-impact company when it comes to the way we treat Mother Earth. Plants are the heart of Botnia, and ultimately we chose to grow our own plants in order to make the finest skincare imaginable and to be the best stewards of the earth that we can be. Being an environmentally driven small business means taking responsibility for each step of our process and questioning how it can be less of a burden on our planet.

Organic skincare is healthier for our land and our water. Because the plants we source aren’t dependent on harmful pesticides, they improve the soil quality and don’t involve chemicals leaching into the groundwater. We use our own green compost, ensuring that every weed goes back into our soil. Future dreams for our microfarm include a water catchment system to use rainwater (right now we use an intelligent drip irrigation system). Our goal is that our little organic farm nurtures a holistic relationship between the soil, plants, and waterways, which in turn creates a more sustainable earth.

Our mission is to always meet the highest quality, from seed to serum and from farm to face. We’re unwilling to compromise on ingredients or practices in the garden or lab, and when you buy from us, we want you to know that we are thinking about our skincare from all angles. We care just like you do, because we make our skincare for you. The future is bright! More land to farm, more farms to support, and more skin to heal.