OUR PHILOSOPHY

The company “Le Germandine” was established in 1993 in Liguria under the name “Il Giardino dei Semplici”, but we moved to Suvereto in 2009 when we fell in love with the landscape and the rich vegetation here.
As well as caring for olives, we cultivate medicinal and aromatic plants with particular attention to the varieties typical of the area and their characteristics.

We believe that in order to obtain good fruits from the earth it is not necessary to exploit it and deprive it in an intensive way but with a good collaboration and seizing at best all the opportunities that nature offers us by knowing it, loving it and observing it we can obtain good results (also economic) .
We are not only romantic and we must also say that all this requires a lot of work and even sacrifice, but the passion for this activity helps us and gratifies us.

CULTIVATION

The farm consists of 18 acres where we cultivate organic aromatic and medicinal plants. We also gather wild plants from the land left to Mediterranean ‘scrub’, such as wild rose, hawthorn, juniper, myrtle and herbs like St. John’s wort, centaury, agrimonia, malva, helichrysum, fumaria, milk thistle, nettle, equisetum and others that grow alongside wildlife in this wonderfully abundant biodiversity.
All our products are prepared with plants cultivated using organic methods, as certified by the CCPB.

We try to cultivate plants in places most suitable to their natural habitat so that they only require intervention in an emergency, for example watering in periods of drought.

TRANSFORMATION

We prepare extracts, liqueurs and herbal teas in our green-building laboratory , built with wood and straw.
To make the extracts we use certified organic grain alcohol, organic cane sugar, bleached by steam without sulphur dioxide.
All these plants are harvested at the optimum time when their properties are at the top.
Other processes to prepare the products (syrups, liqueurs, herbs) include maceration, filtering and packaging.

INITIATIVES AND COLLABORATIONS

We have an agreement with the University of Pisa and are accredited for courses for students of the herbal medicine school. We co-operate with the Agricultural Institute of Aosta, are part of the Association of Organic Producers, Val di Cornia Bio and WWOOF Italy Association. We organise days and courses dedicated to botanical recognition with in-depth analyses on the plants, their uses in the kitchen and/or in phytotherapy and their transformation, which takes place in our laboratory.