"Every field of lavender starts with a single seed. Every movement starts with a single voice.
Dream team
Love’Yah Stewart
Founder and Creative Director
LoveYah Stewart is a visual storyteller, urban farmer, and community advocate amplifying Black and Brown voices through photography, agriculture, and activism. As the founder of THKLUVLTR Photography, she has spent over eight years capturing the beauty, resilience, and truth of marginalized communities.
A proud Dayton native, LoveYah’s heart beats for the Westside, where she uplifts untold stories, transforms neglected spaces, and builds bridges between art, land, and community. Whether cultivating urban gardens, mentoring youth, or advocating for pedestrian safety, her mission remains the same: to ensure Black and Brown communities are seen, heard, and celebrated.
Through The Lavender Project, she merges creativity, environmental justice, and education—using storytelling and green spaces as tools for healing. As part of this mission, she traveled alongside The Lavender Project’s Director of Research and Project Development, Florentina, across the Midwest, Southeast, and Appalachian regions, documenting the resilience of Black and Brown farmers in their fight for land sovereignty, food justice, and cultural preservation.
Dr. Florentina Rodriguez
Director of Research and Project Development
Florentina provides technical support to various urban, nonprofit, and cooperative farms in her community as a farm manager, agricultural consultant, educator, trainer, researcher, and financial/grant specialist through her business, Flora Seeds. She acts as an advisory board member for Ohio’s BIPOC Food & Farming Network (BFFN) and Seven Seed Sowers Cooperative. She founded the Miami Valley Seed Commons whose mission is to cultivate a local seedshed to support community-based food systems and regional resilience. This work includes operating local and traveling seed libraries as well as mentoring others to start community seed programs. She completed her doctoral research on culturally and community-informed seed work at Antioch University in their Environmental and Sustainability Education program. She is the co-author of the Culturally-Informed Community Seed Pledge (CICSP) and Code of Ethics (COE) for use in the small-scale seed industry available at cicspledge.org. She has also served as a DEI Liaison, Racial Justice Coordinator, Grassroots Coordinator, and Outreach Director in seed-based and other community-based nonprofits. She previously traveled with the Lavender Project’s founder, Love’Yah Stewart, across the Midwest, Southeast, and Appalachian regions documenting the experiences of local farmers.