Sloat Garden Center is a locally owned garden center in the San Francisco Bay Area. We offer a wide selection of fresh plants, high-quality garden tools, soils, pottery, and garden expertise by our knowledgeable nursery professionals. We’ll help you grow the plants you love!
It was 1958 when G.E.T. Department store opened up a neighborhood plant nursery at the corner 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 the name changed to Sloat Garden Center. In 2000 we moved to our current, and much larger, location between 45th & 46th Avenues. Over the following five decades, more stores were added in San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, and Contra Costa counties. Sloat Garden Center has grown to become the Bay Area’s largest independent, locally owned garden center.
Dave Geller, the original owner, ran the business out of an old building at the corner of 45th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard. Geller wasn’t sure what to do with his building, so he thought he’d try a plant nursery.
He turned the garage into a sales area and the backyard into a garden center (at the time 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, in which Geller was a tenant.
In 1962, current owner Dave Straus (pictured at right) came to work at Sloat as a 14-year old kid, unloading 40-pound bags of manure for a Washington’s Birthday sale. He was soon loading cars, unloading trucks, sweeping, cleaning, watering, working in customer service and eventually he became a manager. By the time Straus was 21, he was traveling to southeast Asia and making pottery connections for a local import company. When he was 23 he returned to Sloat to work full time…. and he never left.
Dave gradually took over from Dave Geller as owner, and new Sloat locations began opening in 1973. Ted Warshauer joined as VP and part owner in 1985. In 2016, Dave’s son Zack came on board. He started helping in the nurseries at age 8 and frequently joined Dave on overseas pottery trips.
Over the years, Dave and Zack built relationships with pottery makers from around the world. With factories in Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil and China, this extended family of artisans continues to supply our stores from connections made decades ago. “We’ve become close with the pottery makers through the process of design and selection; for us they’re old family friends,” explains Zack.
Now responsible for pottery sourcing across all 12 Sloat Garden Center locations, Zack enjoys finding the right pots for Bay Area gardeners and keeping up with color trends. Today, they still tour nurseries together and talk pottery. “I get the reassurance of being able to bounce my ideas off the true pottery guru. I’m fortunate for the opportunity to work with and learn from my dad."
Because we choose our plants and products carefully, and sell only the best we can find, we guarantee 100% satisfaction on every purchase.
Sloat Garden Center has been a proponent of IPM (Integrated Pest Management) and the recommendation of less toxic pest controls in the home garden landscape since the late 1980s. We have partnered with Our Water Our World, an organization that helps educate the public regarding toxic runoff into our streams, bays, and ocean, since 1997. We have eliminated unsafe chemicals such as dursban, endosulfan, and diazinon before the law dictated we do so. Metaldehyde slug and snail baits have been off our shelves for at least a decade. The majority of the remedies we sell can be used in organic gardens.
We have contacted and polled our plant vendors and we are pleased that most either do not use them or have reduced their use to ornamental crops that are not considered “pollinator” plants. Those growers that use neonicotinoids were told that our buying decisions would be influenced by their practices.
We have offered a wide variety of Certified Organic vegetables, seeds, and flowers for over 20 years.
The premises of Sloat Garden Center are rarely treated or sprayed with any insecticide, fungicide, or herbicide whether considered organic or not.
Our preferred perennial grower labels their plants. “Bee Friendly- We do not spray neonicotinoids”
We provide ongoing product knowledge and updated information to our teams and support them in their desire to offer safer solutions to our customers.
We encourage the proper use and disposal of chemicals and fertilizers.
Family owned for 60 years, Sloat Garden Center celebrates other locally owned and grown companies throughout Northern California through sourcing their plants and products.
Kelly’s Nursery
Four Winds Nursery
CalColor Nursery
McCall’s Nursery
Hollandia Nursery
J&L Nursery
Frantz Nursery
Coyote Valley Nursery
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