Asian Garden 2 Table is a small family run business owned and operated by Regine Zeng & Kent Norman, and our 4 young children Sophia, Amilia, Hurley, & Hunter. The idea behind this business was simple, encourage people to live a healthier lifestyle by growing & cooking their own fresh vegetables at home. This idea was born from Regine’s experience as an immigrant to America from China, and was brought into reality through this website, and our motto: Green in Garden, Fresh on Table.
Regine grew up in a rural farming community of Guangxi Province in Southern China, before going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai. Her family ran several businesses in the community, and Regine gained a lot of experience in farming during her youth, often working with her parents cultivating their own farm.
I (Kent) grew up in a semi-rural area of mid-Hudson valley in New York State, before moving to Florida to attend college and becoming an engineer for a global automotive safety company. My father, Orvil Norman, ran a prominent local business for landscaping, gardening supplies and equipment, and for nearly 40 years hosted a weekly radio call in program for local residents to ask their gardening questions. During my youth I learned much about gardening while working with my father at the garden center and maintaining the family garden.
As fate would have it, both Regine & I were employed at the same company, and began working together on a major project starting up a new facility in Zhejiang, China. During our time together we became great friends, and at the end of the project, Regine agreed to come back to America with me to become my wife. However, one of the biggest adjustments Regine had to make in coming to America was the poor selection of vegetables typically found in the supermarket. So much so, that in desperation she began growing vegetables in pots on the balcony of our condo, just to have something fresh. Then in 2011 as we started our family and searched for a new home, one of the biggest criteria Regine insisted on in was a yard suitable for growing a vegetable garden.
That home garden many of you know well from the early Youtube videos Regine has produced, starting the garden, building the trellis structure, introducing the different vegetables and how to grow them. That garden still produces much of the vegetables we use in our daily meal preparations and has inspired many of you to begin your own gardens. Those early gardening videos, along with our viewer’s positive feedback and repeated question of “where can I get seeds for that” inspired Regine and I to investigate how to source, import, and sell the seeds here in America, and in 2015 Asian Garden 2 Table LLC was born.
Regine has since produced many more video tutorials for cultivating your garden and stir frying your fresh harvest into tasty meals, as well as some entertaining videos of our family life. Thanks to all the support from our customers, in June of 2018 we were able to purchase a small 1-1/2 acre “farm” locally to expand our business. Here we continue honing our skills to produce gardening videos, and have video chronicled much of our work in turning that old horse farm into our new AG2T location. AG2T now offers over 300 varieties of uncommon vegetable seeds, as well as high-quality cast-iron woks and stainless-steel cooking utensils for sale on this website.
Asian Garden 2 Table LLC is fully licensed for the importation and distribution of plant seeds as required by law under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS). This is required of any person, persons, or company that imports & re-packages seed for distribution within the United States. All our imported seed passes through US Customs as required by law and is distributed throughout North America in accordance with all the appropriate State & Federal regulations.
All our seeds that are imported into the United States from abroad are required to pass phytosanitary inspection to be free of plant pests and diseases, and all varieties are regularly verified for acceptable germination rates. We do not and will not import or distribute any plant varieties that are considered to be an invasive species. All our seed packets are properly labeled according to the USDA APHIS & FDACS requirements for vegetable seed in packets as prepared for use in home gardens or household plantings. Every seed packet that we sell is processed, stored, and packaged for shipment on our property in Pinellas County, Florida.
When you order our seeds you will never receive a package from abroad under an inappropriate customs classification such as “jewelry” or “earbuds”. Every seed packet we sell will come directly to you from our farm in Florida, via USPS with tracking information, and every seed packet will be labeled with exactly what is inside. We sell our seeds exclusively from our website, not on Amazon or eBay, so that you will always know that you are getting exactly what you ordered, from us at AG2T.
Thanks again for all your support!!!