About Us

About Us

Sanctuary Herbs of Providence brings you an extraordinary line of chemical free herbs and spices whose essence embodies Health, Comfort, and Community.

🌱 Why health? Herbal Tea is nutritious, delicious and just plain good for you..it can be served either hot or iced for year round consumption.

🌱 Why comfort? It just makes you feel good…as my grandmother used to say, “There is nothing a good cup of tea won’t cure”.

🌱 Why community? We know who grows our herbs; we trust our farmers to grow without chemicals and we pay them a fair price.

Our Mission

🌱 Support small farm viability by buying from farmers we know, trust and love!

🌱 Provide the freshest, chemical-free herbs—from “farm to cup” in days (really!)

🌱 By buying local, we maintain a low carbon footprint to help fight climate change

Here’s to herbs that enhance our health, our comfort and help build community!

History of Sanctuary Herbs of Providence

Christina Dedora (farmer) and Eliza Sutton (community organizer) were former co-workers at Southside Community Land Trust in Providence, RI. Just around the time of the 2016 election, they happened to get together with their former boss and Executive Director of Southside Community Land Trust, Katherine Brown. Katherine’s enduring commitments to justice, community, and love for the earth weaves through her research, reflections, advocacy, and stories. The three women began brainstorming and framing a plan for a business that would help thwart the anti-immigrant & refugee rhetoric that was being debated in Washington, DC.

Christina, owner of Blue Skys Farm, has been renting land for many years at Urban Edge Farm in Cranston, RI. Urban Edge Farm works in a collaborative setting with many other farmers who work together to manage the infrastructure of the working farm as well as to collaborate in marketing and sales. Christina knows first hand how difficult it is to make a living at farming, not only for native farmers, but especially for those who are new to the country.

Eliza had worked along side and helped to organize many growers at community gardens all over Providence. These folks immigrated from all over the world from such places as Liberia, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Uganda and more. She knew these people well and was concerned about their well being.

Sanctuary Herbs was also very fortunate to consult with Myrna Aldolfo. Myrna had traveled the world working looking for the highest quality products for such companies as The Republic of Tea and Panera Bread. She showed us the extraordinary quality of our herbs, developed blends and gave us sage business advice.

Sanctuary Herbs of Providence, LLC was officially formed in 2017! Our business plan is simple: it’s all about our FARMERS & the HERBS!

Eliza left Sanctuary to pursue other interests in 2019; Cheryl Dedora-Pynn joined thereafter to become Director of Operations and in 2020.

Behind the scenes in art design and social media is Vanessa Query of Query Media.

We are happy to announce that since 2017, we have bought over $50,000 of fresh herbs from RI farmers!