Sloat Garden Center

The Sloat Garden Center is the largest garden center in Northern California. They offer a wide range of fresh plants, high-quality garden tools, soils, pottery and gardening expertise to their knowledgeable nursery professionals. They're going to help you cultivate the plants you love.

 

It all began six decades ago in the Sunset. It was 1958 that G.E.T. Department store opened up a neighborhood plant nursery at the intersection of 45th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard in San Francisco. In 1968 the small store moved to a larger location (G.E.T 's former tire shop and gas station), just down the block, and and the name changed to Sloat Garden Center. In 2000, they moved to their current, and much larger, location between 45th and 46th Avenues. Over the next five decades, 12 stores have been relocated to the San Francisco, Marin and Contra Costa counties. Sloat Garden Center has grown to become the largest independent, locally owned garden center in the Bay Area.

 

The Sloat Garden Center began in 1958 in the Sunset district of San Francisco. Dave Geller, the original owner, managed the company out of an old house on the corner of 45th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard. Geller wasn't sure what to do with his building, so he decided he was going to try a nursery.

 

He turned the garage into a sales area and the backyard into a garden center (when the property was shared with a gas station). Sloat Garden Center soon became a discount nursery under the umbrella of San Francisco 's discount department store, GET, where Geller was a tenant.

 

In 1962, the current owner, Dave Straus, came to work at Sloat as a 14-year-old boy, unloading 40-pound manure bags for the Washington Birthday sale. He was soon packing vehicles, unloading trucks, washing , cleaning, watering, working in customer service, and finally becoming a boss. By the time Straus was 21, he was traveling to SouthEast Asia and making pottery connections to a local import company. When he was 23, he went back to Sloat to work full time, and he never left.

 

In 1968 Dave Straus bought into the company as a minor partner, and over time he bought Dave Geller. Additional sites have been opened since 1973. In 1985, Vice President and part owner Ted Warshauer joined the team.

 

In 1993, Straus decided to focus on the highest quality of plant materials and garden products. "What we sell is a guarantee of satisfaction that is second to none," explains Dave Straus. "And we've never given up on that decision."

 

Sloat Garden Center has been the largest independent pottery importer in the U.S., with close links to many other independent garden chains that buy pottery from Sloat. Looking back on nearly five decades in the garden center business, Dave reflects. “ Obviously I love plants and gardening, but over the years, the pottery part is what I've enjoyed the most, ” he explains. "It gave me the opportunity to travel, design the product, choose new glaze colors and work with many different factories in many different countries. Bringing this lovely pottery to our customers is a delight in itself.

 

The Sloat Garden Center has been a proponent of IPM (Integrated Pest Management) and has been advocating less toxic pest control in the home gardens since the late 1980s. They have been partnering with Our Water Our World, an organization that has helped educate the public about toxic runoff in our streams, bays, and oceans since 1997. They removed hazardous chemicals such as dursban, endosulfan, and diazinon before the legislation dictated that they did so. Metaldehyde slug and snail bait have been out of their shelves for at least ten years. Any of the remedies they sell can be used in organic gardens.

 

They have approached and poisoned their plant vendors and are satisfied that most of them either do not use them or have limited their use to ornamental crops that are not considered pollinator plants. Those growers who use neonicotinoids were advised that our purchasing decisions would be affected by their activities.