Kula Nursery is a grassroots nursery working within and for BIPOC communities to increase food sovereignty through garden education and culturally relevant plant starts. Our mission is to strengthen food sovereignty among BIPOC communities and promote cultural and biological diversity. Since 2020, we have been deeply rooted within the South Asian community in the greater San Francisco Bay Area to understand their food preferences and determine what culturally important foods are missing from the local food system. We are slowly inching our way towards identifying and growing the specific foods that are greatly desired for culinary, medicinal and spiritual purposes.

We provide 100% open pollinated, mostly heirloom plant starts to gardeners in the Spring and spend the rest of our year growing out a variety of heirloom South Asian seeds to offer back to our online community. Our collection now includes over three dozen heritage seeds that were once gifted to us by local community members and were impossible to find in our local seed system. We hope that by continuing to adapt these seeds to our climate we will build resilience in these seeds and ensure the survival of both these heritage foods and their seeds. 

Zee Lilani is the founder of Kula Nursery. She received her Masters at UC Davis in International Agricultural Development and has since shifted her focus to strengthening the local food system through grassroots initiatives and community building. Zee’s mother and grandmother, who migrated to Pakistan from India during the partition, taught her about the importance of preserving their cultural identity through the preparation of traditional South Asian meals.

Located in Petaluma, CA on unceded Coast Miwok Territory.