Danziger breeds the baby’s breath varieties XLence, Million Stars, and Million Daisy, then works with growers and distributors to get them into the cut-flower market. It also markets them to the people designing with them. In June 2025, its “Say It With Gyp” campaign recommended XLence for wedding installations and presented designers using its varieties in large-scale work. The company developing the plant was also promoting a reason to buy more of the finished stems.
That is the part of the baby’s-breath conversation I want to spend more time on. A florist can order flowers grown in Colombia, through a wholesaler in the United States, and still be buying a Danziger variety. A farmer can encounter its material while placing an ordinary plug order. The breeder’s involvement begins before either purchase, and a country-of-origin label only answers one of the questions about how the flowers got there.
I don’t buy Danziger material. My refusal is connected to Palestine, including the displacement of Palestinians from Bayt Dajan, whose village lands include the Israeli community where Danziger is based. It is also part of my support for Palestinian-led economic pressure on the companies and institutions sustaining Israel’s system of dispossession. To apply that decision to flowers, I need to know which company developed a plant, who is producing it, and what commercial relationship an order would continue. Those can be different companies.
Danziger, Mishmar ha-Shiv’a, and Bayt Dajan
Danziger identifies its headquarters as Mishmar ha-Shiv’a, near Tel Aviv. The company dates its founding to 1953. Mishmar ha-Shiv’a was established in 1949 on the lands of Bayt Dajan, a Palestinian village near Jaffa whose residents were displaced in 1948.
PalQuest’s account of Bayt Dajan, published by the Institute for Palestine Studies, records attacks on the village early that year and the residents’ flight as attacks on Jaffa began in April. Destruction of the village by the Jewish National Fund was underway in June. Mishmar ha-Shiv’a is one of four Israeli communities the account identifies on the village’s lands. This establishes a connection to the dispossession of 1948; it does not place Danziger’s headquarters in the West Bank or establish the title history of its individual parcels.
Palestinian return is part of the political question here. The Palestinian-led BDS movement calls for ending occupation and colonization and dismantling the Wall, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194. Its demands extend beyond the territories occupied in 1967. Treating the history of a company’s location as settled simply because the dispossession happened earlier would leave that demand out of the discussion.
The BDS corporate boycott guide calls for boycotting Israeli companies unless they meet its conditions concerning non-complicity and public recognition of Palestinian rights, including refugee return. It also identifies priority campaigns selected for their documented relationships and potential to win. Danziger is not individually named in that priority guide. The horticultural exclusions on this site are my application of that political framework to the industry I work in, rather than an official BDS list of flower varieties.
What a breeder continues to sell
Danziger’s business includes breeding, propagation, licensing, and marketing. Its company profile describes supplying cuttings, plants, and tissue-culture material, with licenses provided to propagators and growers. A grower’s work may begin with a plant whose commercial reproduction is already governed by an agreement with a rights holder. Growing the crop somewhere else does not, by itself, end that agreement.
The company reports propagation facilities in Israel, Guatemala, Kenya, and Colombia. Danziger can supply plant material through production outside Israel. A label identifying Colombia or Kenya as the growing country cannot establish that a flower has no Danziger relationship.
There are several ways that material reaches a grower. In November 2023, Danziger announced Moss Hill Foliage in Apopka, Florida, as a rooting partner for its Floresta program. The arrangement connected cuttings from Danziger’s Guatemala facility with a U.S. nursery that would root them for North American growers. The announcement described increasing demand for rooted liners and the search for a partner able to supply them.
Other programs involve somebody else’s breeding. Danziger’s agreement with Terra Nova Nurseries identifies Danziger as a licensee and producer of Terra Nova material. Calling those plants Danziger-bred would misidentify the breeder and obscure the actual relationship: one company is supplying propagation capacity for another company’s varieties. The Terra Nova article examines the documented program and its limits.
Danziger’s 2026–27 catalogue announcement describes nearly 60 new varieties and three new crops, including collaborations with other breeding programs. Gypsophila is one part of that catalogue. Scabiosa, limonium, veronica, solidago, roses, and chrysanthemums also appear. For U.S. growers, the Farmer Bailey and Ball Seed lists identify the products documented through those suppliers. A breeder’s larger catalogue is not proof that a particular supplier sells every entry.
Marketing the large installation
Danziger’s “Say It With Gyp” promotion names designers Nicole Haffner of Blumenwerk, Jutka Poppe of Flower&Taste, Paul Fleischli of Blumen Krämer Zürich, and Lucy Overment of Florista. It pairs their designs and endorsements with particular varieties. XLence is presented for substantial bridal work and installations; Million Stars for finer texture; Million Daisy for a more open structure. The campaign also shows those varieties combined in one design.
A florist specifying a variety for a wedding creates demand that a wholesaler has to fill; growers, in turn, have a reason to keep producing a variety their customers request. Promoting a flower for installations gives it a different potential volume of use than promoting it as an occasional accent. The campaign is explicit about the design applications, although it does not tell us how many additional bunches it sold.
I’m not saying Danziger invented the baby’s-breath wedding. Designers, growers, wholesalers, clients, and publications all participate in what becomes desirable. But the company is doing more than making a variety available and waiting to see what happens. It is providing examples, attaching its product names to them, and encouraging designers to specify those products. The commercial incentive is fairly straightforward: greater demand for the finished flower gives growers more reason to purchase or license the material needed to produce it.
Industry recognition adds another form of promotion. WFFSA’s 2026 awards named Danziger’s Million Daisy the Filler Grower Xcellence winner and its Kora rose the Rose Grower Xcellence winner. The awards put the named varieties in front of wholesale buyers and other industry participants, adding recognition from a trade organization to the company’s own promotion.
Applying the boycott to an order
I don’t use baby’s breath or waxflower in my work. The supplier lists distinguish the particular relationships behind those exclusions: named Danziger gypsophila programs, for example, and the Australian waxflower company Helix’s documented Israeli partnerships. Other varieties require their own identification; the crop name alone does not establish a breeder or a supply route.
For a grower applying the Danziger exclusion, the product’s full series and variety name is a useful starting point. The supplier should be able to distinguish the breeder from the nursery producing the plugs and from any company marketing the program. For finished stems, the grower’s label and product sheet may identify a variety that an order sheet simply calls “white gypsophila.” If the information stops there, the breeder remains unknown. The retailer’s name, a photograph, or the fact that the flower was grown locally cannot fill that gap.
Growers can use those records to make a shared request: stop carrying this program, identify the producer behind this listing, or offer a replacement outside the named relationship. The pressure is directed at a supplier’s commercial choices. A coordinated refusal can put future orders at issue in a way that a general statement about shopping ethically does not.
Sources and supplier records checked October 12, 2026.
