The pandemic was devastating for San Francisco’s retail economy, but one green shoot was the garden-store business. But after a few thriving years, the bloom is off the rose — and then some.
City sales tax data shows just how far the local horticulture industry has drooped: not just down from its pandemic-era peak but to its lowest point in 15 years. According to local business owners and industry researchers, the decline has been driven by receding interest in gardening, a sluggish home sales market, unlucky weather, and the simple fact that for the green-thumbed, plants can be a one-time investment.
For a minute there in the middle of the pandemic, it was boom times at Flora Grubb Gardens in the Bayview. Crowds flooded in, seeking refuge in the leafy, open-air aisles of white-washed and terracotta pots, flowering succulents, and yucca.
“The customers started lining up in throngs,” said Flora Grubb, the co-owner. “Those lines started before we opened every morning and lasted all day, every day.”
Sales spiked throughout 2020 and 2021. Then spring 2022 rolled around.
Society was opening back up. Spring travel began superseding garden days, and in-office work tore people away from their carefully cultivated home jungles.
“[Sales] fell off a cliff and never went back,” Grubb said. “It was like, woah, where did everybody go?”
For Grubb, the slump hasn’t ended. Foot traffic at the store, and the revenue that comes with it, is far lower than the pre-pandemic normal.
The years leading up to Covid felt like a “golden age” for the garden industry, Grubb said. Interest in plants was so high that a single viral Instagram post was enough to bring customers marching into the store to make a purchase. But the intensity of the pandemic appears to have overwatered the trend to the point of rot.
The local struggles mirror a national shift. After more than a dozen years of growth, U.S. spending on flowers, seeds, and potted plants stagnated for the first time in 2024, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The number of U.S. jobs in the building-material and garden-equipment sector surged 10% from April 2020 to April 2021; since then, it has fallen two years straight. Jeff Lerner, owner of Flowercraft Garden Center, said the shop’s revenue has returned to its pre-pandemic norm, but he’s cut back on some of the seasonal part-time positions he brought on during the boom.
The hangover from the plant frenzy has been severe enough to shutter some San Francisco shops. The Sill closed all its stores nationwide, including a Pacific Heights location, to go online-only after losing $6.9 million in 2021 and $6.7 million in 2022. Little Trees in the Richmond, Plant Therapy in the Mission, Terravita Plants in Hayes Valley, and Succulence in Bernal Heights all closed their doors in recent years.
David Gray shut down Hortica, the Castro nursery and plant store he’d owned since 2004, in the wake of the pandemic. His shop didn’t benefit from the Covid-era surge in demand; he thinks that’s because so much business went to amateur plant enthusiasts selling plants online.
“That really kind of stole the thunder from me,” Gray said. “It did kind of kill my business.”
Sometimes it’s only when long-established plants die off that there is space for new life to blossom. That may be happening on one corner of Ocean Avenue, where pandemic-era upstart The Plant Lady SF sees growth ahead.
Founder Jeannie Psomas stumbled into plant sales after fielding numerous requests from neighbors interested in buying the greenery she was photographing in cute containers and posting to Instagram early in the pandemic. In two short years, her retail operation moved from her living room to a former ATM kiosk to a full-fledged brick-and-mortar location.
Psomas is bullish that 2025 will be a strong year for plant stores. She predicts people may cut back on travel in the face of economic uncertainty and instead spend some of that cash sprucing up their homes.
Plus, if the housing boom that local and state officials are pushing for gains steam, it could benefit Psomas and her peers. Industry analysts predict that housing market growth in the coming five years will bolster U.S. garden stores, as sellers and buyers invest in their nests.
Regardless, Psomas knows that any growth in the years to come will look different from her experience during the pandemic.
“Plants aren’t selling themselves anymore,” she said. “You have to find the customers now.”