As parents, we never want to be faced with having to choose between safety and beauty, especially when it comes to a centerpiece nursery item as significant as a crib. And, wouldn’t it be awesome to feel confident that the investment you are making today in this piece of furniture will be worth it once your little one is ready for a big kid bed? 

After years of designing for larger furniture companies, and after giving birth to her fourth child, Julie Knisley realized there were few (if any) options that she found to be both aesthetically pleasing and met safety standards. She also realized a bizarre yet glaringly obvious fact: there were no women-owned crib companies in the United States. “Shouldn’t moms be designing products for babies? Not to knock men,” Knisley quickly interjects “my engineer is a man and he’s wonderful. But women get the nuances of a nursery. We just do.”

Enter Milk Street Baby. 

Milk Street Baby is making buying a crib feel like buying real furniture–and we mean really beautiful eye-catching furniture. Exhibit A: the brand’s newest collection, The Branch Collection. This assortment of nursery furniture brings the outdoors into the nursery because let’s face it, kids are not getting outdoors enough these days. The all-natural, textured branches on these cribs are inspired by the branches Milk Street’s founder and designer—Julie Knisley—found in her own backyard, which, side note, is a horse farm in Massachusetts. Because it is idyllic.  

“You go outside with a kid,” Knisley who has her own four children, “ and all they’re doing is picking up wood, picking up stones, picking flowers…You want to be able to touch and feel real stuff. You want to feel the grain. You want to see the grain. You want it to be real. And out of all of our pieces, I think, [the Branch Collection] bring the outdoors into the nursery in a very real, real way.”

The Branch Collection offers that cult-favorite Transitional Crib (which, by the way, is under $600) in five natural colors as well as corresponding toddler and adult bed transition kits. And if you’re one of those matchy-matchy types that want it to all come together perfectly, have no fear. This collection also includes Double Dresser and Changer Tray, all created in the same elevated, natural vibe.

But design isn’t the only thing Milk Street Baby is paying attention to. Rest assured, this brand knows you can’t make a crib unless you follow the strictest compliance standards for construction.  “We take those constraints and use them to drive our design,” Knisley says. Not the other way around.  “We want [parents] to walk into the room and be [think], the crib is the best part of my nursery.”

And since it is Earth month, we had to ask: what about your commitment to the environment? “We believe in open communication and transparency with regards to our materials and finishes,” Milk Street Baby says confidently. “We strive to educate new parents about specific details of finishing, test results, and the chemical contents of our coatings, metal parts, and even our packaging. Each finish we use is Greenguard Gold Certified, with pigments and topcoats developed exclusively for Milk Street by the incredible team of artists and color specialists at AkzoNobel.” Additionally, all finishes have minimum phthalates and a low VOC, and even on their imported products, they proudly meet the EPA guidelines for emissions.

Visit milkstreetbaby.com and use code: BABE10 at check out for 10% off your purchase.

This article was written in partnership with Milk Street Baby.